


When We Come Around Again (I Will Be Waiting for You)

by megs_bee



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Divergence - Captain America: The First Avenger, Canon-Typical Angst, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Infinity Stones, Love Confessions, M/M, Pining, Referenced Steve Rogers Death in Alternate Timeline, Time Travel, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-04
Updated: 2019-11-04
Packaged: 2021-01-22 13:10:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 29,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21302621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/megs_bee/pseuds/megs_bee
Summary: In 2014, James Barnes is an old man, bitter with regret over his failure to save Steve's life during the War.  Sure, he lived a long life, but he never stopped wishing things had ended differently.On the anniversary of Captain America’s death, an old acquaintance shows up with a once-in-a-lifetime chance for James to make things right and save Steve: travel back in time to change his own history.James goes back to 1943 and has to relive the events of the War as Bucky Barnes, Howling Commando and right-hand-man to Captain America -- all the while trying to change events in just the right way to fix the future.  But time is counting down to a mission on a train in the mountains ...
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 31
Kudos: 149
Collections: Captain America Big Bang 2019 | cabigbang





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to my contribution to the Captain America Big Bang 2019! 
> 
> I had a lot of fun writing this one, so I hope you lovely readers enjoy it, as well! I have fantastic art created by [Huntress79](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Huntress79/pseuds/Huntress79), which wonderfully captures the feel of the story, so be sure to check it out inside the fic! The full art post is also [here on Ao3](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21316417) or [here on Dreamwidth!](https://sandy79.dreamwidth.org/119931.html)
> 
> Beta was provided by the awesome Kuja. Thanks for fixing my mistakes and funny tenses! Any remaining mistakes are all on me. 
> 
> (For any readers concerned about the Character Death tags/warnings, there's a brief explanation in the end notes!)

[ ](http://imgbox.com/i2Fxdo3a)

* * *

[ ](http://imgbox.com/TNN6wl7m)

_ “...and we can only hope that the unrest in Gulmira will end before many more civilians get caught in the crossfire. Now to return to our coverage of the Captain America retrospective, we go over to Sandy at the Grand Army Plaza in Prospect Park, Brooklyn. Sandy?” _

A female voice takes over. “_ Thanks, Dan. The crowds are lively here at the memorial for local Brooklyn legend Captain Steve Rogers, marking the 75th anniversary since his death at the end of the Second World War. As we now know after 2005’s declassification of a number of files from that era, the world’s first and only supersoldier Captain America met his end during an at-the-time top secret mission with the Howling Commandos, where they infiltrated a train and captured the Nazi scientist known as Arnim Zola. The mission was successful, of course, but during the altercation Captain Rogers lost his life, and only Gabriel Jones and James Barnes returned to the rest of the Commandos unharmed.” _

A shaking hand reaches toward the side table, but fumbles the remote and it clatters to the floor. “Jenni. Jenni! Come ’ere and help me turn this shit off!”

The nurse comes in from the hall and picks up the remote, teeth bright against dark skin as she gives him a tired smile. “Hell if I know how you can always tell it’s me walking by, Mister J.B. What’s got’cha pissed off today?” she teases. He doesn’t answer, just glares at the television where the talking heads are sitting in their booth above the crowds, talking like they know fuck all about shit. 

Janni follows his glare to the screen. “Ahh, another war memorial. I imagine that’ll do it, ” she says, gentle this time, before clicking the channel over to some movie, lowering the volume. 

“Bunch’a shit, every time. They weren’t there. They don’t know.” He glares down at his clenched hands. Gnarled knuckles, liver spots and scars. “Always fuckin’ wrong what they’re sayin’.”

Janni pats him on the shoulder. “I know, Mister J.B. You said that last year, too. Guess they haven’t learned anything since then. You need anything else while I’m in here?”

James mumbles and waves her away, thoughts drifting. _ They always got it wrong. No one, not a one of us, came back ‘unharmed’ from that fucking place _ . _ That fucking war. _ That fucking train.

“I was there,” he mutters to the empty room, the vapid faces on the screen. “_ I _know.” 

He sinks into the memories for awhile. Seventy years; still as fresh as yesterday. 

_ The incessant rattle of wheels on tracks, metal screeching against metal on every curve. Biting wind full of ice, cutting through wool and skin, like they might as well have been standing there naked on the mountainside. Blue eyes like steel. “We’ve only got one shot at this. Get on the train, get Zola, and get out.” _

_ Wind whistling past his ears, fists clenched on the handles carrying him down a goddamn wire onto a moving train because what the fuck kind of plan is this, Rogers? Laughing blue eyes bright against the yellow light of the map room. “Come on Buck, of course it’s nuts. Means they ain’t gonna see it comin’. Who in their right mind would fly off the side of a mountain and jump on the roof of a train car?” _

_ A Hydra guard with a huge gun that shoots the unnatural blue light that lives in Bucky’s nightmares. Blue - it’s always blue - like the colour haunts him, following him everywhere in his life. Gabe took point, got through to the next car before the doors slammed shut with Steve and Bucky on the other side. Steve’s shouting, shield in front of them both deflecting bullets and blue light alike. “Jones! Keep going! Find Zola!” Gabe nods, shoulders squared and rifle at the ready as he disappears further toward the front of the train, out of sight. _

_ Crouched side by side behind a stack of crates, Bucky leans out to fire at the guard, quick shots in succession, one, two, three. “Well I dunno, Stevie, this feels like an ambush to me.” Steve grunts, popping up long enough to throw the shield into the guard’s face, shattering his helmet and sending him crashing to the ground. “Guess someone told ‘em we were comin’.” _

_ Three more cars cleared of guards. Might even catch up with Gabe at this rate, except the next door opens to a huge fucker with a double-barrel blue light weapon already blasting. Steve throws the shield and rolls across the narrow aisle between shelves, but the angle’s off. It hits the guard but doesn’t drop him, and the gun fires an arc of blue that destroys containers and metal and sends debris raining down on Steve. _

_ The shield bounces off a fallen crate, tumbles across the floor toward Bucky. Steve’s already shifting the debris, but the guard is too close, mouth of the weapon starting the hum that ends with blue death. Bucky grabs the shield in his free hand, rolling to his feet already firing his handgun—how many rounds does he have left? He’s lost count, fucking shit! -headshot after headshot deflected by the black helmet. But it’s accomplished what he wanted, to draw the Hydra asshole’s attention away from Steve. _

_ Blue light flashes. Hits the shield, deflected. But the force is too much—I ain’t the supersoldier here—and shield goes flying one way and Bucky the other. Pain. Cold fire runs up his left arm; someone’s screaming. Bucky rolls over. His handgun is still in his right hand, thank fuck. Steve rises from beneath twisted metal, explosive with rage. Punches the guard, shatters the helmet— _

_ Blue light. Someone’s screaming. _

_ Headshot. _

_ Too late. _

The scuff of a footstep on the tile by the door; quiet as a knife but it might as well be loud as a gunshot. The sound pulls him out of old memories, and he turns his head to see a slim, dangerous looking redhead standing just inside his room. She’s dressed head to toe in tight black combat gear, hair pulled back in a loose braid hanging over one shoulder. No visible weapons, but somehow he knows she has them. She meets his gaze with calm green eyes, studying, assessing. He knows those eyes, and when the memory finally slides to the surface—Sarajevo, an escort mission bringing in a USSR scientist under Operation Paperclip, a U.S. bullet fired into a Russian hip—he wonders what she thinks to see him now, old and withered. _ Romanova, Natalia Alianova. _

Well. Three decades brings along changes—in one of them, at least.

He tips his head in a nod, but doesn’t take his eyes off her; he’s old, but he isn’t stupid. “It’s been a long time, Natashenka. Has the Red Room finally come for me?”

She relaxes her stance, a change so slight it’s barely noticeable. Gives a hum and a little smirk, allowing him to see a facsimile of mirth. “I defected.”

James snorts a wheezing laugh that ends in a thick cough. “Ha. Good. They’re a bunch of assholes.”

Romanova tilts her head, affecting a look of mild surprise. “Just like that? No doubting my loyalty, or questioning whether I’m telling the truth?”

Waving his hand dismissively, James coughs again. Damn lungs. “You were always the best. More skilled, more capable than anyone else in the Red Room, or the Widow program. Better than those assholes deserved. I always figured you’d take them down one day. If anyone could do it, it would be you.” He pauses, then adds less stridently, “And I read the files. I know what the Red Room did to you. They deserved to reap what they sowed.”

Another hum of acknowledgement, but no other response. Well, he sure as shit doesn’t blame her for not wanting to dig into that history. He lets the silence stretch for a moment. “Did you burn it all down on the way out?”

All Romanova offers him is a slow, cat-like blink with no change in the mask of her expression, but he takes it for an affirmative and just nods back, once.

Shifting in his chair, he waves at her to come further into the room so he doesn’t have to keep craning his neck to keep her in his sights. “Well if you ain’t here to kill me, what is it you want?”

“We need your help, Sergeant Barnes.” A tall, imposing black man strode into the room with, James thinks, an unnecessary amount of dramatic timing and black leather trench coat. Was he just standing outside the door, waiting for the most impactful moment to come striding in here?

Fuck, but James was too old for this shit. Heaving another raspy breath, he mutters, “I ain’t been a Sergeant for a long, long time. Who the hell are you?” He catches the brief flash of genuine amusement in Romanova’s eyes, though her expression doesn’t shift from its placid mask. Seems that sassing this guy is enough to get through her defenses, just a little.

“My name’s Nick Fury. Director of S.H.I.E.L.D.” He stops a few feet inside the room and glares at James. He has brutal stripes of scarring across the right side of his face, barely missing his eye but cutting across the corner of his mouth. It had the effect of drawing his mouth into a permanent scowl, though James is pretty sure that would be his default expression regardless.

But the name, he does know that name; just never had a face to put with it. Par for the course, really, when it came to the expert players in the spy game. “Fury, eh?” James says. “You took over from Director Carter.”

“After she retired, yes,” Fury states. “You were out of the agency and out of the game by then.”

James hums, not really in agreement. He waves his hand a little to encompass the current tableau. “Except no one’s ever really out of the game, are they.” It’s a statement, not a question, and Fury at least has the good grace to nod.

“Once a spy, always a spy,” Romanova murmurs, letting sarcasm bleed through her voice.

James just shakes his head. “I was always more of a soldier than a spy.”

“You were a good agent, Barnes.” Fury strides over to the window, peering around the edge of the blinds and out into the parking lot. “Howling Commando. S.S.R agent. One of the most highly skilled S.H.I.E.L.D. agents to ever serve the agency. You’re basically a legend.”

“I’m an object lesson,” James corrects him, because it’s true. What you end up with after trying to build a career on the back of a failure so great, so unforgivable, as the one that James carries inside him every moment, is nothing but age and bitterness and an endless well of regret.

_ The man who let Captain America die. _

“I left all that shit behind me twenty years ago when I retired, Fury. I sure as hell don’t intend to sign back up.” James hacks out another cough. “And I’m pretty much on borrowed time here, so why not get to the fuckin’ point and leave before I fall asleep.” Which, there’s no way he’ll actually sleep with the Spider and the Spy of Spies in his room, but he figures it’s as effective a threat as he’s got left, since they wouldn’t be here at all if they didn’t want something from him badly enough to show up in person.

“Do you know you’re the longest serving agent, out of all the agents who went through the S.S.R. and S.H.I.E.L.D. combined?” Fury asked, turning from the window to pin James with a glare. “Active field agent until well into your seventies. Even now, your I.D. says you’re ninety-six but you sure as hell don’t look it. Now, why do you think that is?”

“I got no fuckin’ idea, Fury,” James snaps back. “Good luck and good genetics.” But James knows that because Fury asked, he already knows the answer. Fuck if James is gonna corroborate anything, though.

He also doesn’t let his gaze drift from Fury’s face to Romanova’s nearly flawless features.

“Why are you here, Fury?”

“Like I said. We need your help.” Fury’s voice is serious, and James is sure that the man believes what he’s saying, whatever it is. “In fact, you’re pretty much the only one who _ can _help, because the man we need is Sergeant James Barnes of the Howling Commandos, circa 1942.”

Which tells James exactly nothing. He slants a look at Romanova, brows tipped into a scowl. “He always this cryptic?” She just tips her head in a shrug. “Look, Fury,” James sighs roughly. “You gonna tell me what you want? I’m an old man and in no shape to go back in the field, so whatever it is you want, I can tell you now you’re probably gonna leave here disappointed. S.H.I.E.L.D. already knows everything I know; you have all my mission reports, debrief records, and I’m sure there’s a record of everything else I’ve done since I retired. So get to the fuckin’ point or fuck off.”

Fury doesn’t react to the anger; at least, not that James can see. “It’s actually less what we want from you, and more what _ we _ have to offer _ you _.” He reaches up and hits the channel button for the television, and the screen flips back to the coverage of Captain America’s memorial. “We can give you the chance to make things right.”

James’ attention is drawn to the scene on the screen in front of him. Crowds of people holding flowers and candles shift like the ocean, as the camera pans across to focus on the statue at the centre of it all—Captain America cast in golden bronze towering above them, looking toward the horizon, shield held firmly at his side. Brooklyn had latched onto their homegrown hero when those files came to light, and truly embraced it.

James hates that fucking statue. They got Steve’s nose all wrong.

With effort, he turns away from the screen. “There are some things that can’t be made right.”

“But what if you could?” Romanova asked. Her voice is even, her expression bland, but there’s something serious underneath that James can just barely sense. It’s enough that something in him straightens up and listens.

Whether Fury notices James’ renewed attention, or just figures the old man’s a soft touch for a lady, he stays quiet while Romanova speaks. “We’ve learned a few things recently that are...troubling. Things that indicate we’re headed toward something bad. The world-ending kind of bad.”

“People have been predicting the end of the world at least once a decade for centuries.” Barnes shakes his head. “What makes this time any different?”

Romanova nods her head in acknowledgement of his point. “I wouldn’t believe it either, except for who said it. And she’s always been right so far.”

“Right about what?”

“World events, big and small,” Romanova states. “Aliens. Friendly and...less than friendly.” And yeah, James remembers seeing some of that shit on the news. He’s seen a lot of weird fucking shit in his life—working for SHIELD will do that—but even he was thrown off by the appearance of true beings from other planets. Thank god he’d already been long retired when that New Mexico situation went down a few years back. He doesn’t even want to think about the Manhattan Invasion or the aftermath that amounted to years of every military and government agency in the world trying to chase down the Chitauri aliens that were left on Earth after the portal closed. It was sheer luck and the grace of a god James doesn’t even believe in anymore that his care facility didn’t get attacked by a stray alien and caught in the crossfire. Even now, news reports still cropped up about the appearance of the occasional Chitauri footsoldier, and the efforts and subsequent destruction of people taking them out.

But it’s when Romanova says, “Hydra,” that James straightens in his chair. It’s a visceral reaction, old rage mixed with more recent frustration. As though all the shit during the War wasn’t enough, he’d spent his whole career at the SSR-turned-SHIELD doing everything he could to stamp them out, but there was always yet another head growing somewhere.

“Those fuckers. What’re they doing now?”

“More like what they _ did _,” Romanova says. “We found out that Hydra hasn’t just been out in the world causing trouble, but that they’ve been inside SHIELD, too. ”

James feels the breath rush out of him. _ Hydra was inside SHIELD _. “For how long?”

“Decades.” Romanova’s eyes narrow ever so slightly with anger, which might as well be a siren blaring. 

“_ How?” _ James exclaims, not wanting to believe her yet certain she’s telling the truth.

“Operation Paperclip,” she replies, and James closes his eyes in despair because _ of course _. God, he’d never liked that program in the first place, but the higher-ups were always so determined to collect scientists like stamps.

“Fuck.” James rubs his forehead with a palsy-shaking hand. Ninety-something years old, and it never fucking ends. He’s so tired. 

“The world is at a tipping point,” Fury says. “Terrorism. Never-ending wars over resources. This country is already a police state in all but name thanks to the military countermeasures instigated after the Chitauri invasion. Other nations are much the same. Turns out it’s pretty easy to sell your citizens on the idea of constant surveillance when you say you’re doing it to protect them from aliens. And we both know you’re already aware of the real state of things, since even in a retirement home in the middle of nowhere, you’re not here under your real name. Isn’t that right, _ Jimmy Buchanan?” _

“Whatever happened to subtlety?” Romanova murmurs, and this time she lets him hear the amusement in her voice. He just grunts and waves a hand at her.

James nods, though, because yeah, Fury’s got a point and he can’t argue with it. “Like I said, Sergeant Barnes has been gone for a long time.”

“This country, this world...we don’t always make the right decisions,” Fury continues. “But the last decade has been particularly terrible in that respect, which made me think that something else was going on behind the scenes, and I was right. Hydra has been deliberately upsetting the balance of power everywhere, from inside world governments and corporations. Those aliens didn’t come here on a whim, or by coincidence; someone brought them here on purpose to start something we’re only just beginning to see the framework of. We’re in a tight spot. SHIELD, the world. You name it. We’re stuck between a rock and a hard place and another damn rock, Barnes, and right now there isn’t a good way out of it.” 

James shakes his head; yeah, everything’s gone to shit the last few decades, but anyone surprised by that must be blind. “I still don’t know what the hell this has to do with me, Fury. Not to be a bastard, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be dead before any of this world-ending shit goes down.”

“But now we have it on good authority that, if certain key events of the last seven decades had happened differently, then this would be an entirely different ballgame,” Fury says. “We need Captain America.”

The breath catches in James’ throat. The words hurt like an old wound made fresh. _ Don’t we all. _ It’s all he can do to point at the television, still playing news coverage of the memorial on loop. “Pretty sure we already established this, Fury. Captain America’s dead. Has been for a real long time.” His voice trails off. “Some things you can’t make right.”

“What if you can?” Romanova says again, and whether it’s real or feigned, her voice is the closest thing to kind. 

“How could I possibly change what happened?” James shoots back, angry now, because they don’t _ know _. They weren’t there to see what went down.

“With this,” she replies, and a small hologram projects from a device on her wrist. _ The Tesseract _.

James freezes, unable to look away from the blue that haunts his nightmares, burning through people faster than the eye could see, and dissolving Schmidt where he stood before burning it’s way through the floor of the plane and into the ocean. Blue fire, the same blue as Steve’s eyes on the train that day. 

He loses a bit of time, drifting in old, bad memories, but it can’t be for more than a few minutes since when he comes back to himself his guests are still standing in the same place he remembers. 

“_ How? _” he demands. He thought he’d seen the last of this fucking thing in 1944; to be faced with it again now, so many years later…

“Howard Stark recovered it sometime in the 80s,” Romanova replies. “It was a fluke. He’d given up regular searches for the Cube and the Valkyrie years earlier, but during the latter half of the Cold War he was in the North Atlantic testing new propulsion engines for submarine missiles and picked up some strange energy readings. It turned out to be the Tesseract.”

Where before James could admit he’d mostly been humouring Fury and his doom-saying, the Cube was a whole different thing. “Well, now you’ve got my attention.” He points at Romanova and rolls his eyes. “Maybe lead with that next time, instead of a half-hour of talking mostly bullshit.”

“We think we know how to fix this—how to get Captain America where we need him to be—and you’re the key to the whole thing,” Fury says. “If you’re willing to do what needs to be done.”

James looks around the shabby room he’s been living in for the last decade, studies the scarring on his left arm. The mournful sound of a trumpet playing on the television draws his attention once more to the screen where photos of Captain America are slowly rotating across the screen. The regret wells up, old and hollow now, but still painful.

He doesn’t know if he believes what they’re saying; hell, both Fury and Romanova have been cryptic enough he’s still not sure what they’re offering, what exactly it is they’re asking him to do. But seeing the Tesseract, knowing that cursed thing is involved somehow, he thinks he needs to hear them out.

“All right,” he says, and starts the process of shuffling forward to work his way out of the recliner. “I’m gonna assume you don’t want to fill me in on the rest of this nonsense in a building full of civilians.” He grabs his cane from where it leans against the arm of the chair, and uses it to lever himself onto his feet. 

“You assume correctly,” Fury states. 

“Fine. Let me grab a few things and we can go.” James shuffles over to the closet—damn, his joints are stiff from sitting too long—and pulls on a jacket. Then he moves to the bedside table, pulling the drawer all the way out until he can reach in over the back and pull out the handgun he keeps hidden. He catches Romanova smirking, obviously amused, and he just shrugs at her; she knows the life they live. Age is no excuse for carelessness.

Sliding the gun into the holster concealed in the lining of the coat, he moves toward the door, cane thumping in counterpoint to his steps. “I can’t sign myself out of here, so we’ll tell them you’re my niece here to take me out for the day,” he says to Romanova, motioning her toward him. “Fury, I’m sure you can spy yourself back out of here without being seen.”

Fury just nods and stands to the side of the door, out of sight of the hallway, while James slowly makes his way out of the room. Just before he leaves, Fury asks, “Anything you can tell me about the Cube that we ought to know now?”

James doesn’t know whether it’s meant as a goad or a serious question, but either way the answer’s the same. “You should’ve left it in the ocean.”


	2. Chapter 2

* * *

It’s surprisingly easy to get out of a nursing home when you’ve got someone pretending to be a visiting relative, James thinks, as Romanova flirts with the receptionist, signs him out in the register, and they walk right out the front doors without anyone giving them a second glance.

Of course, having the ability to hack into the system and add a fake emergency contact to the facility’s database doesn’t hurt, either.

It only takes them a few minutes to make their way down the street to where Fury has a vehicle parked a couple blocks away. Fury’s already sitting in the driver’s seat of the black SUV, sunglasses shielding his expression. James is willing to give the guy credit for not only getting out of the home without being seen, but also making it back to the vehicle before the two of them. The spy of spies, indeed.

The hour-long ride to the small airstrip outside of the city is silent and tense; no small talk here, James thinks. But really, until he knows exactly what’s going on and what these two want from him, there’s not much he has to say. 

Anything he has to say to Romanova, and there are certainly a few questions hovering in the air, he’d rather not get into in front of Fury. Romanova might appear to trust him, but to James he’s still very much an unknown quantity.

When they reach the airstrip it appears deserted. Shelbyville, Indiana might not be a big place or a tourist hub, but he doubts that there would usually be no one at all around in the middle of a workday. He glances at Romanova with a raised brow, but she just shrugs and doesn’t answer his unspoken question. Well, whatever. Hopefully whatever they did to clear the place out wasn’t permanent.

Pulling up in the far corner of the empty airstrip, Fury parks and gets out. James pushes his own door open and starts shuffling himself toward the edge of the seat and into a standing position, pulling himself upright with the help of the doorframe. He looks around as he does so, checking the sky for an incoming ride, but for the moment they’re alone.

Except, apparently not. Fury strides away from the SUV and a plane just...materializes out of thin air in front of him, like no plane James has ever seen before. It looks like a stealth bomber had a baby with a spaceship. Matte black and sleek lines, no visible weapons but he’s sure they exist. James gives a low whistle, impressed despite himself. “We didn’t have _ these _ the last time I flew out on a mission.”

Romanova smirks, “It’s called a Quinjet. They’re new.”

James eyes a very obvious dent and blast marks on the exterior as she leads him toward a ramp opening at the rear of the quinjet. “Not so new you haven’t already marked her up. For shame, a pretty gal like this.” He pats a side panel before following Natashenka around and up the ramp into the cargo bay.

Romanova rolls her eyes slightly, turning just enough to let James see her do it. “If I’d been the one flying, she’d still be in mint condition.”

“Stop telling people I’m a bad pilot!” a voice calls from the front of the aircraft. 

“I wasn’t, but you just did,” Romanova responds dryly. 

There’s some muttered swearing, then a man comes out of the front, pilot’s headset loose around his neck. The guy is average height, sandy hair. Arms and chest heavy with muscle, not quite in the way someone gets solely from time at the gym or a firing range; not a regular gun user, then, and James wonders about his weapon of choice with a physique like that. 

He stands in front of James and looks him over critically, then turns to Romanova and Fury. “This the guy?”

Romanova nods. “This is the guy.”

“‘Kay, then we gotta jet, literally.” The guy nods to James. “Agent Barton, SHIELD.”

James nods back; he knows another spy when he sees one, can tell from the way Barton stands and how his blasé attitude doesn’t match the sharpness in his gaze. “James Barnes. Retired.”

“Not quite so retired anymore,” Fury points out.

“I already said I ain’t making you any promises,” James retorts. “But I’m willing to hear you out before I turn you down.” _ Because of the Tesseract’s involvement _ , he tells himself, _ and only the Tesseract _. But he knows deep down that isn’t strictly true.

Clint moves back to the pilot’s seat, followed by Fury who stands behind the co-pilot chair, gripping the back and staring moodily out the window. 

“Buckle up, kids. Liftoff in five,” Clint calls back as he starts flipping switches. In a matter of seconds the ramp at the back lifts and closes, and the engines hum as they power up. Romanova directs James to a seat along the side of the cabin. He buckles himself in while she settles into the seat a few spaces down; just out of arm's reach, he notices; but for both of them, so that’s something.

James turns his head as he feels the aircraft—the _ Quinjet, _ what a name, he’s not sure if it sounds cool or silly—start to move. He’s able to see a sliver of the front windshield through the gap between the pilots’ seats, and realizes they’re taking off straight up from the ground. No runway necessary, apparently. “Well, how about that,” he mutters. When there’s nothing else to see but sky, he turns back to Romanova.

“So how’d you get caught up with the yahoos at SHIELD?” he asks, because he’s genuinely curious. The agent—the spy—he remembers her being all those years ago wasn’t the kind to take up with an agency that more or less amounted to the cowboys of the intelligence world. Sure SHIELD did good work, most of the time, but a lot of the people who fell in with the organization weren’t exactly the best at following the rules. Strays and misfits and people who liked adrenaline more than common sense were SHIELD’s backbone.

“Why do you want to know?” she responds, casting him a faux-coy glance. James just rolls his eyes; he’s too old for her wiles these days. He’d like to think he’s too smart to fall for her tricks, but she really is a master at her craft, so he’s gonna give her credit and go with age as the reason.

He just shrugs. “Call it an old man’s curiosity. Never pictured you as the type to join up with another shady organization after freeing yourself from the first one.” Especially considering what the Red Room did to her, even as he’s sure he barely knows the half of it

Romanova studies his face for a while, her expression smooth and unreadable, but she must decide he’s sincere. “Once I was done with the Red Room, I worked freelance for a few years. As you do.” She shrugs lightly. “Eventually SHIELD sent someone to take me out. He chose to take me in, instead.” Her eyes flick to the pilot’s seat and back to James. Intentional or not, it’s enough to let him know who it was that brought her to SHIELD.

“I’m still a bit surprised you took their offer,” James admits. “They’re as secretive as any spy agency, and the Red Room would have known what SHIELD was like. I would’ve expected the similarities to put you off.”

Romanova shrugs, with all appearance of carelessness. “I can appreciate mercy when it’s offered, even if I think making the offier in the first place is stupid.”

It sounds good to an outside ear; mercy, atonement, useful service. Whatever form the offer took. But James knows that whatever Barton himself had offered Romanova, in the end the true deal wasn’t made out of mercy. Far more likely that SHIELD saw an opportunity to recruit the star of the Red Room, the Black Widow herself, and jumped at it.

Although, learning that Hydra’s been alive inside SHIELD for decades throws all that into a new light. One he’s sure Romanova is aware of—and the fact that she’s here, involved in whatever nonsense this is, makes it pretty clear she’s angry.

Then there’s the fact that Romanova and Fury clearly believe that Hydra-in-SHIELD isn’t actually the _ worst _ threat they have to worry about right now. James is honest enough with himself to admit that the thought is very concerning.

After a moment, he says quietly, “I’m glad you got out, Natashenka.”

“I mostly go by Natalie, these days,” she says quietly. It’s an uncommon thing for a spy of her calibre to offer—deliberately sharing the name she’s using, whether it’s a cover or not—but as far as he can tell she’s being sincere.

Bucky snorts a bit of a laugh. “How very American.”

She gives him a considering look, then allows a tiny smile to tilt the corner of her lips. “You can keep calling me Natashenka, if you like. For old time’s sake.”

“Those good ole’ days of bullets and spy games?”

“Well, you kept up with me, so I figure you’ve earned the honour of calling my by a nickname.” She gives him an arch smile. “You even managed to shoot me, which is more than most can claim.”

“Bye-bye, bikinis,” James says, casting her a look making it clear he’s aware she looks as good now as she did thirty years ago in Sarajevo.

She lets him hear the deadpan sarcasm as she retorts, “Yeah, I look terrible in them now.”

Maybe it makes him a sentimental old fool, but the heyday of spycraft at the height of the Cold War truly had been something else. Dangerous, with the possible threat of nuclear annihilation hiding around every corner and within every coded message, but he’d felt something then that he hadn’t felt since the War. “The good old days.”

Romanova still smiles but it turns grim, the hint of teasing falling from the expression. “The good old days will certainly seem that way compared to what’s coming for us if this doesn’t work.”

James sighs. “Well, _ that’s _ not ominous at all.”

***

There’s nothing to see out the windshield but sky and clouds for close to an hour, and James is a little ashamed to admit that he dozes off, the events of the morning taking their toll. He jolts awake at their swift change in altitude, glancing out the window automatically to see the familiar Manhattan skyline rising quickly in front of them.

It only takes a moment for him to figure out their trajectory. They’re heading straight toward Stark Tower, the recognizable angles and curves of the architecture glinting in the afternoon sun. If Stark’s involved, James thinks, that’s actually...well, certainly not surprising, given Stark’s tendency to get mixed up in wide and varied shenanigans. 

It’ll be nice to see the kid again, at any rate, whether or not James ends up falling in line with whatever this mad plan turns out to be. It’s been...hell, he’s not even sure how long it’s been. A few years, at the very least.

The quinjet lands smoothly on the roof, engines powering down as Fury and Romanova unbuckle themselves and stand. James is slower to follow, joints protesting the long ride and uncomfortable seats, but he eventually makes it to his feet and straightens his back. Following Romanova down the ramp, James whistles beneath his breath, impressed, as they walk across the landing pad and into what appears to be a communal living space complete with kitchen and bar. He’s never seen inside this part of the Tower, since the upper floors were still under construction the last time he was around Manhattan, but the place definitely _ feels _ like something of Stark’s. Everything high-end, glossy metal and shining hardwood.

No one’s around, however, and Fury leads the way directly to an elevator at the other side of the space. Chrome and glass, the elevator is spotless and as expensive-looking as everything else. 

_ “Greetings, Sergeant Barnes. It is good to see you again,” _ a computerized voice said from the speakers.

James feels a grin spread across his face, made all the more enjoyable because he could tell that Fury, at least, hadn’t expected to hear that greeting. “Hey, JARVIS. Good to see you again, too—in a manner of speaking.”

_ “Of course.” _ If Stark’s AI could sound amused, James is pretty sure that’s what he’s hearing.

Fury arches an eyebrow in James’ direction. “Didn’t realize you’d met JARVIS. Stark only got his AI up and running for good a few years ago.”

“Maybe publically,” James says with a shrug. “But did you forget I’m that kid’s godfather? He’s been showing me his toys since he was two feet tall.” 

Romanova looks mildly curious at that, but Fury just grunts and presses the elevator button.

_ “My apologies, Director Fury. Sergeant Barnes does not currently have permission to access that area.” _

“I’m giving my authorization for Barnes to come in on this project,” Fury replies, pressing his palm to a scanner while leaning forward for a retinal scan. “Fury, Nicholas J.”

_ “Understood, Director.” _ The elevator doors slide closed, and the car begins to descend soundlessly. It’s barely a minute, however, before the car comes to a stop at one of the lab floors and the doors re-open to the blasting sound of some kind of rock music.

The lab space is dimmer than James expected as he steps out of the elevator, wincing a little against the noise. A glance shows that it’s dark because there are heavy blast doors closed tight against all the outside windows except for a dozen feet of the west wall that was still open the afternoon light. _ That always bodes well for whatever project Stark’s working on. _

The entire layout of the lab is different from the last time James was here, and even given that it’s been at least a dozen years since his last visit to Manhattan, it’s clear this was a quick alteration. Workbenches and shelves are haphazardly pushed aside and up against walls to leave the whole centre of the lab unimpeded for the machine now taking up most of the space. At one end sits a raised platform, unidentifiable equipment and wires surrounding it in a half-circle. The open side faces another machine across the room, a round disk-shaped thing standing face-on to the platform. It reminds James of a giant electromagnet, or pictures he’s seen of a particle accelerator, with thick wires wrapped around and between square metal plates. Thick cables run everywhere across the floor, connecting all the equipment together and making it nearly impossible to navigate without tripping.

James shuffles to a halt while Fury keeps going deeper into the lab. Aside from the chaotic equipment rearrangement, the lab is unmistakably Tony’s, with blue holographic images and screen projections hovering everywhere throughout the room, showing blueprints and schematics, and what looks to be various camera feeds and news station videos. He recognizes footage of the Captain America memorial from earlier that day. They put up another photo, and James looks away. 

Bright sparks off of metal catch his attention, and he turns toward the source: the man in a welding helmet working at a table across the room, the sound of the sparks and flame lost beneath the music.

Fury calls out, “Stark,” but it’s barely audible over the music. James looks toward a control panel in the wall and says, “JARVIS, can you turn down the music?”

The volume lowers, and JARVIS’ voice announces them. _ “Sir, Director Fury, Agent Romanov, and Sergeant Barnes have arrived.” _

James fights down a laugh when Fury tosses a glare over his shoulder; clearly JARVIS isn’t nearly so accommodating to the good director. James can only assume that’s purposeful on Stark’s part.

Stark turns off the welding equipment, setting the torch onto the workbench and tossing the helmet down beside it. He’s sweaty, a bit on the pale side, and there’s grey at his temples that wasn’t there the last time James saw him. Tony looks tired, too, with shadowed eyes as though he hasn’t been sleeping enough. James figures that’s probably the truth, given the state of the lab and all this equipment that he suspects Stark has only just recently built. Jeez, he wants to tell the kid to lay down and take a nap. Even geniuses need rest.

Tony ignores Fury completely as he turns, greeting James with an exaggerated, “Uncle Buck!” His voice is full of ridiculously over-done enthusiasm, his arms spread wide. 

“Tony-baloney!” James replies with equal exaggeration, followed by a hoarse chuckle at the wildly offended look on Tony’s face. 

“Come on, don’t embarrass me in front of the super spies,” Tony groans, affecting a hurt look that doesn’t quite cover the amusement in his eyes. “How do you even remember that, you’re ancient, aren’t you supposed to be all forgetful and shit?”

“Pretty sure you’re embarrassing yourself just fine,” James teases. He waves his index finger in a circle around his face then points it at Tony. “What’s going on with that, by the way. I didn’t realize stupid looking beards were genetic.”

“You’re going to lose your status as the only one of my old man’s friends I can stand if you keep that up,” Tony snarks back, but both of them are giving in to their amusement now. Tony draws close enough to pat James firmly on the shoulder; it appears the kid still ain’t a hugger. Quieter, Tony adds, “Good to see you, Uncle James.” 

“It’s good to see you, too, kid,” James says. “You look like shit, though.”

“I’d argue and say I always look great, but I don’t think I’ve slept in three days, so you’ve probably got a point,” Tony replies. Now that he’s standing close, James can see the more subtle signs of slightly manic, over-tired nervous energy that’s obviously the only thing keeping Tony going.

“I assume since you’re clearly involved in whatever nonsense SHIELD’s up to this time that you’re the reason for my visitors?” James points out.

“What?” Tony blinks, and looks around a moment at the holograms, at Fury and Romanova still standing off to the side just watching, then looks back at James. “What? Wait, what the hell are you doing here? How did you even _ get _here?”

Fury speaks up then. “Stark pointed out that you, Barnes, are the only remaining member of the Howling Commandos to still be alive—”

Tony throws his arms up then rubs both hands across his face, turning in a circle before pointing at Fury. “What? I mentioned his name once, _ in passing _, I didn’t tell you to go...go pull him out of the old folks home and drag him halfway across the country!”

Fury doesn’t even blink at the torrent of accusations, just looks at Tony and says, “You know that if this is going to work then we need someone who was there, which means Barnes is the only option we’ve got.”

Tony makes some kind of angry, incoherent noise that James recognizes as registering his complaint, but since Tony doesn’t outright argue, James figures that means Fury’s telling the truth.

_ “Pardon me, Director Fury,” _ JARVIS’ voice interrupts. _ “You have an incoming call from the World Security Council.” _

Fury pulls his cell phone from a pocket to look at the screen, then scowls at Tony. “Damn it, Stark. I’ve told you to stop jamming my signal.”

“No stray signals in the lab!” Tony points—a little wildly, James thinks—at all the machinery around them. “Do you want to risk setting off one of these things? Just to be clear, the only correct answer is ‘No’. Take it down to the conference room on fifty-three, you’ll be able to get through on your cell from in there.”

Fury just scowled again—seriously, is that the guy’s only expression?—and starts walking towards the elevator. “I am going to go take care of this. You three, get the chit-chat out of the way.”

None of them speak until Fury’s in the elevator. As soon as he’s gone, though, Tony visibly loses some of the tension in his shoulders; not all of it, but James figures it’s the presence of Romanova responsible for that extra alertness.

The whole exchange was so quintessentially Tony, and James can’t help but creak out a chuckle. “You’ve been jamming his phone service in the lab?”

Tony smirks. “Right now, definitely, because even though half the Tower is a Faraday cage anyway, we really don’t want any of this stuff picking up any stray _ whatever _. But also, yes always, because it gets him the hell out of here.”

James just nods; he’s only spent half a day with Fury so far and he can see where Tony’s coming from, especially considering Tony’s long and well-documented history of problems with authority figures. “Anywhere to sit down in this joint?”

Tony leads him around the edge of the room to where a small couch, chair and coffee table arrangement has been crammed crookedly into the corner. It looks like everything was shoved over haphazardly to make room for all the strange machines. James sinks down and settles into the cushions with a groan and a sigh.

Romanova follows them, and perches on the arm of the farthest chair. She doesn’t say anything, just watches, and James tries not to roll his eyes. Well, whatever. Stark clearly already knows her so he’s no doubt also aware of who and what she is.

“This business aside,” James starts, waving his hand at the lab. “How are you doing?” Because it’s been a long damn time since he’s been in the same room as Tony.

Tony is as flippant as ever, waving a hand dismissively as he flops into his own chair, “Same old thing, really. Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist. All the highlights.”

James hums, but arches his brow and says in a quieter tone, “How are you really, kid?” And they both know what he’s really asking, what he’s referring to. 

Tony’s quiet for a few minutes, a rare thing, before he leans back in his seat. His eyes cut over to Romanova, but he must decide she either already knows what he’s about to say, or might as well know if she doesn’t, because he answers James in an equally quiet voice. 

“Still got the chest harness and battery pack combo going.” He tugs the neckline of his t-shirt down far enough that James can see fabric and leather straps and buckles, along with the bulky metal edges of the case around the electromagnet keeping the deadly shrapnel away from Tony’s heart and lungs. “I’ve got a better idea based on the arc reactor tech, if I can just figure out how to miniaturize it...but I’m not there yet. For now at least, I’ve got it rigged so it’s an easy swap to change out the battery.” He rubs at his eyes. He looks tired, sounds tired. “Better than having to plug myself in every three hours, at any rate.”

“You look better than the last time I saw you,” James says, and despite the signs of stress and tiredness, it’s true; Tony’s lost the stretched-thin gauntness and sickly pallor that James remembers from their last face-to-face visit..

“Last time you saw me, I was three days out of a two month stay in the hospital after nearly a year in a hole in the desert, so yeah, I bet I do look better,” Tony snarks back, but it still sounds off to James’ ears.

If James is honest with himself, he’s a little surprised at how welcoming Tony’s been, since aside from that one brief visit right after Tony was rescued from the desert three years ago it’s been nearly a decade since they saw each other face to face. They’d never completely lost touch, one or the other always eventually checking in, but it feels like forever since they’ve spent any significant time together.

Specifically, James and Howard spent a couple decades at odds as their opinions diverged under the shadow of the Cold War—about how to operate SHIELD, how to run missions, what to pursue in R&D—until Howard finally stepped down from SHIELD in a formal capacity and only provided tech on a consultancy basis. The fallout took the form of a number of years where James and Howard avoided spending time together. James wouldn’t have minded so much except for the lost time with his godson.

After Howard’s death in the early nineties, James was able to spend more time with Tony, but by then the man was an adult and busy taking over the Stark empire—and following a little too closely in Howard’s footsteps when it came to military weapons tech. They didn’t have a falling out per se, but for a lot of years it was hard for James to be okay with some of Tony’s life and career choices.

Then Tony’s desert ordeal happened, which was terrible and terrifying for everyone involved. But it also provided enough of a push to help them reconnect for real. Face-to-face time was still rare, since by then James was retired from SHIELD and living under the alias he’d spent decades building up in secret—though it was apparently less of a secret than he thought, since Romanova and Fury certainly didn’t seem to have any trouble finding him. Fucking spies.

James looks out across the lab, full of strange equipment, and sighs. “What the fuck’s this all about, Tony?” Because Tony is clearly involved—far more involved with a SHIELD project than James would’ve expected, especially considering Tony’s history with Howard and the agency that took so much of his time during Tony’s early life.

“It’s about the end of the world, Uncle Buck,” Tony fake-enthuses, spreading his arms wide before wincing and lowering them again, tugging at one of the harness straps to adjust it. “Didn’t Fury and the Red Menace fill you in?”

“They’ve mostly given me vague spy-speak and unlikely promises, so far,” James replies, scowling at Romanova.

“We did tell you about the Hydra situation—” she begins.

“But clearly you didn’t tell me everything,” James broke in, gesturing again to encompass the lab at large, and by extension whatever situation was going on here. “So get talking.”

“You know from your own history, James, that the SSR and Hydra were always interested in superhumans. Case in point, Captain America and the serum,” Romanova says, giving him a direct look at the mention of the super soldier program on both sides of the war. “But as you will also remember, the SSR, and later SHIELD, never stopped trying to find other super humans. Or make them.”

And yeah, James remembers those early days of the SSR-turned-SHIELD, when the desire to recreate the serum was high in the wake of the end of the war, because how better to prevent another war than to stop it before it starts—with an army of super-human soldiers? It’s a large part of what started the divide between James and Howard, when the scientist couldn’t—or wouldn’t—give up his pursuit of the next super soldier. Howard never was successful in the end, and never seemed to get over that failure.

Now that he knows Hydra wasn’t wiped out in the War like they’d all assumed it’s easy to see the direction this is going. “Hydra kept looking, too.”

Romanova nods. “And you can imagine how easy it would be from inside SHIELD, which had all the resources and knowledge, and already had a significant program dedicated to finding, recruiting and defending against superhumans.”

“Basically, Hydra used SHIELD’s operations to spend the last few decades finding super humans, and then hunting them down and eliminating them. SHIELD—actual SHIELD—often recruited the ones they found useful, and kept others not considered a threat under surveillance but otherwise largely left them alone. But Hydra-in-SHIELD, if they couldn’t secretly recruit people to their cause, then they made sure that those who were considered enhanced humans ‘disappeared,’ one way or another.”

Tony leans forward in his seat, waving one hand to bring one of the blue hologram screens to life in the air in front of them, flipping quickly through the digital files. James sees photo after photo, with fact sheets attached, every one of them marked ‘Deceased’. Agent files, civilian files. “They found anyone they saw as a threat, and if they couldn’t convince them to side with Hydra, they took them out. Bad missions for loyal SHIELD agents. Accidents for civilians. Whatever it took.”

“And these are just the ones we know about for sure,” Romanova adds. “We have no idea how many others Hydra might have found, or killed, outside the reach of SHIELD.”

James catches sight of a few familiar names, agents he remembered from back in the nineties, though he’d never known them well. Clearly not, since he’d had no idea that Shea Tanner had been some kind of telepath, or that Matty Carmichael apparently had some kind of magnetic hands. What the hell? No wonder the guy never seemed to lose hold of his weapon, no matter how wild the fight.

And he agrees that it’s terrible, that so many more people—innocent people—are dead at the hands of Hydra, but knowing this doesn’t really clarify the current situation. “So what’s all this got to do with me?”

“Besides the fact that it’s either a miracle, or a testament to your skills, that they haven’t found you?” Romanova gives James a pointed look, and because it’s only her and Tony present, he nods. He managed to keep it under wraps for more than fifty years, but Romanov knows because of her experiences in the Red Room and the times she fought James over the years, and Tony knows because he’s family. But the truth has always been that he was never quite the same after what happened at Azzano. He’d been something more. Something like Steve.

“Besides that,” James acknowledges.

Tony speaks up. “The reason this is bad news, besides the obvious ‘dead people’ reason, is because there are threats coming—as in, more than one threat, just to be very clear—that this world is not equipped to handle. Threats that a super human would at least have a chance of being able to take on and win. Enough super humans fighting on our side? Might even be a piece of cake.”

Romanova frowns, lets James see the concern she’s feeling beneath the calm facade. “But right now, there are very few high-level super humans remaining, ones who would be capable of doing what needs to be done.”

“You need a super soldier,” James finishes for her. 

“Very specifically, we need Captain America version 1.0,” Tony says. He flicks his fingers and a visual of Steve’s old SSR file replaces those on the screen. It’s nothing James hasn’t seen before, of course, but it’s been awhile and he stares for a few moments at the two photos of Steve before and after the serum. The faded sepia tones hide what James knows were brilliant blue eyes.

It never hurts any less to see that face, even after years and decades. It’s why he never kept a photo around; it always hurt too much to look at. Not that he was ever able to escape Steve, his face cropping up in his memories and more recently the occasional memorial. It was an odd sort of reverence, the memorials, for just one man who didn’t make it through the war when the reality was that so many countless other young men never came home.

He looks away from the image of Steve hovering in the air. “So what exactly are we talking about doing, here?” James asks. Because he wouldn’t be here in the first place if they didn’t have a plan in mind already.

Tony leans forward, intent, and starts flipping through visual screens again; James sees blueprints that look like the machinery in the lab. “Well, Uncle Buck, what do you know about spacetime and time travel?” He gives James an exaggerated, slightly manic grin.

James rolls his eyes with a groan. “I’m already regretting this,” he mutters, but he sits a bit straighter and leans closer to Tony to make sure he won’t miss anything. He knows how fast Tony starts talking when he gets going.

“We have it on good authority of a superhuman, she’s got some form of...precognition, I suppose is the closest description,” Romanova said. “But it’s just not that she sees what’s about to happen, more like she’s able to see...alternatives. Options. The road not taken, as it were.”

“What does that mean? The road not taken?” James says. Lines from an old poem, half remembered, drift through his thoughts. _ Two roads diverged in a yellow wood... _

“She says that Captain America’s death was a pivotal moment in time, one that if it hadn’t happened, or had played out differently, would mean that the future—or rather, our present—would be different,” Romanova says. “A _ lot _ different, in a lot of ways. Not the least of which being that we’d be a lot better equipped to handle Hydra, and any other threats headed in our direction.”

“I’m gonna go out on a limb here and assume that we’re not talking about magically resurrecting a dead man,” James says, internally hoping sincerely that that’s not where this conversation is headed because that’s gonna be a veto for sure.

“No, we’re talking time travel,” Romanova says.

Somehow that’s not much better. “Okay…” James pauses to digest that because while he’s seen a lot of crazy shit over the years, he served with the SSR and SHIELD. For lack of a better term, it was all _ mundane _ crazy shit. Warlords, mad scientists, and yeah okay, those goddamn aliens were something else, but still. “So you’re saying someone should travel back in time to save Captain America’s life, and it’ll somehow solve a lot of problems?”

“Not someone. You,” Romanov says, and even though James saw it coming he’s still unsettled. It feels like playing with things that none of them truly understand.

He dredges through his memory for the right way to articulate at least part of what’s got him concerned. It was something he’d heard from Tony, or maybe one of the other science-types he worked with over the years. “Assuming time travel is a real thing that we can do, doesn’t it just create other universes or whatever they’re called?”

“Alternate timelines,” Tony states. “And yes, usually, but in this case no, not the way we’re gonna do it. Alright kids, lecture time! Pay attention!” He claps his hands together and jumps to his feet, bringing several holographic displays forward to hover in front of them. 

James studies the diagrams that Tony pulls up. But he’s always been a soldier, not a scientist, and the wavy lines, boxes and most of the words don’t make a whole lot of sense to him.

“So you already know that alternate timelines are a thing,” Tony starts. “And while to the best of our knowledge of modern physics time travel has never actually successfully been done, not only is there no real way of knowing since we’re essentially only living in a single timeline ourselves, but there’s also a first time for everything and it’s gonna be done by yours truly—and we’re gonna do it right.”

If it wasn’t for the seriousness of the situation, James might want to laugh at Tony’s self-satisfied expression. Nothing got the kid going as much as being the first one in some new technological endeavour. Instead, he just nods for Tony to continue.

Tony brings up an image of the Tesseract, glowing nightmare blue. He casts James a vaguely apologetic look; he knows a little about James’ nightmares. “The Tesseract isn’t what we thought it was. Not exactly. Everyone who encounters it sees a weapon, a power source, and sure, it’s all of those things. But it’s also something else.” The image of the Cube split apart, revealing a smaller glowing oval, still that horrible blue. “It’s called an Infinity Stone.”

“Who calls it that?” James manages to grit out, his eyes glued to that blue glow. As though if he looks away, that blue light will swallow him whole. He can already tell there’s not going to be a good answer to any of his questions from this point forward.

“A lot of people, as it turns out,” Romanova says. “Aliens. Gods. Mystical beings. Seems like the humans on Earth were the only ones—until recently—who didn’t know what kind of object we have.”

Tony’s eyes are focused on the hologram. “Nearly limitless power, and with the ability to open portals through space. There are apparently six of these stones—”

“And we have two of them, right here in New York,” Romanova states. Tony flicks a hand and another image materializes beside the first, this one showing first a gold medallion-looking thing, then another small glowing oval, this one a brilliant green. “The second one controls time.”

“Just to be sure we’re on the same page here,” James begins, because his head is spinning and he’s too old by far for this kind of mystical-science shit. “You think you can use these magical or whatever stones to send me back in time, so that I can...do _ what _exactly?”

“Most theories of space-time use images like a stream or a sheet to try and explain these concepts,” Tony says, standing and moving into the middle of the holograms, which rearranged themselves around him automatically. “And that’s fine, it’s whatever, good enough for schoolkids and laypeople. It’s not wrong, but it’s simplified. And I’ll be honest, I’m going to go with more metaphors since I know you’re not much of a math guy, Uncle Buck. But you can think of 4th-dimensional space-time sort of like a big brick, but one that stretches infinitely in time—future and past, in a sense.” 

The holograms shift to illustrate as Tony continues to explain. “The multiverse theory, and the idea of multiple timelines, assumes that every action, or choice, or change of state, results in a new branch of events cleaving off.” The image of a long rectangle sprouted branches that curved off into the edges of the projection. Tony’s expression is starting to slide toward manic again, where James can glimpse him through the holographic lines. “If you subscribe to this newsletter, it means that there are hundreds of millions—infinite really—alternate universes and alternate timelines, all coexisting and branching off, and once they’re separate that’s all anyone in that timeline will experience. No crossing the streams. No visiting the neighbours. No going backwards, assuming you could, because there’s no real point—any change you make will only create a new branch, not change things in the place and time you came from.” 

He gestures rapidly at the holograms, bringing images of the Tesseract, the green stone, zooming to the forefront of the projection. “_ Except _ when you suddenly learn about a bunch of magical cosmic rocks that can _ control _time and space and reality and a whole bunch of other shit. Because these magical rocks from the beginning of the universe change the rules of the game.”

Tony’s on a roll now, gestures wide and voice loud. “Our problem is that we want to change the way things are _ now _, for us, this world, at this time. But if you follow the common understanding, this is impossible because all anyone going back in time will accomplish is creating more branches. But here we have something that can control space, and something that can control time. So what we have now...” Tony gives them a wild grin. “I call it the Infinite Brick of Cheese time travel theory, also known as ‘there are no multiple timelines here, bitch’.” Tony pauses, then adds, “If I had a mic, I’d drop it. This is the point where you applaud.”

“Sure thing, kid,” James replies, and he’s damn proud of Tony, but he’s also damn confused. “Just as soon as you finish explaining.”

Tony blinks, running his eyes across the holograms before seeming to catch up to himself. “Right. What’s we’ve got here, with the Tesseract and the time stone, is a way to control a chunk of space-time. Think of the chunk of near-infinite spacetime that is tied experientially to us—to where we are and what we’re trying to do—like a block of cheese, vacuum sealed in plastic. Everything inside is contained; nothing in, nothing out. But inside the wrapper, you can change whatever you want, and it’ll stay inside the boundary. So you make a change at one ‘end’—for lack of a better word because while space-time is technically directionless, all human perception of space-time is directional, blah blah blah—and you change everything after that point within the wrapper. What we end up with is a single timeline, with any changes in the past indelibly and irreversibly changing the ongoing future. There, mic drop for real this time.”

Bucky rolls his eyes, because Tony’s great with the science but not so great at getting to the final point. “Okay, kid, assuming I followed all that and how it all works, what exactly do I have to do?”

Tony pauses, like he’s thinking back over all the words he just spouted and realizing that he still missed a crucial detail.

“Right. Look, I don’t know all the details about the day Rogers died, aside from a few things I inferred from stuff you’ve said over the years, and what I read in those declassified files. But no one really knows what went down on that train, except for you because you were there.” Tony comes back to sit beside James again, his intensity fading now that he’s shifted from science to feelings. “So I don’t know exactly what you have to do, just that we’re going to send you back and you’ll do anything and everything you can to save Steve Rogers’ life. You’re going to change the past, and Captain America will come out of that train, out of that war, alive, and our future—our _ now _—will be saved.”

***

It’s late when James enters the apartment in the Tower where JARVIS directed him after dinner, if he could call take out eaten in the lab with Tony and Romanova _ dinner _. Tony said the place was available for James to use for the duration of this crazy plan. 

They parted to Tony’s glib, “Get some sleep, old man,” but James knows that’s unlikely. Sleep is slow to come and quick to leave, these days.

He checks the bedroom to see his overnight bag resting on the bed, but returns to the living area and settles into the loveseat near the windows. The glass stretches floor to ceiling and offers an unimpeded view of the Manhattan skyline, lights glittering against the night.

Romanova’s words echo inside him. _ If you can save Rogers’ life, then everything else will fall in line. We’ve been assured of that. _

The scale of what they’re trying to do is daunting. Terrifying, in truth, and not just if he fails. Success means rewriting the history of the world, with no traces of the current timeline events remaining. One shot, and a one-way trip.

“We won’t be able to try again if this doesn’t work,” Tony had explained over pad thai earlier that evening. “Because once you go back there, anything you change will affect the here and now, so there’s a better than good chance circumstances will be different enough that none of this will have happened, or at least not have happened the same way.”

Tony and Romanova had explained the rest of the plan—the first part of it, anyway. The equipment in the lab was designed to open a sort of space-time portal, powered by the two things Tony had called Infinitely Stones. “We need control over the where, and the when you will end up in once we send you back. The stones let us build the gateway, and keep everything contained in this timeline. But a ship needs a navigator, which is where_ she _ comes in.” 

The holographic image of a young woman, barely more than a teenager, expanded in front of James. The mugshot wasn’t doing her any favours, but even allowing for the universal nature of bad ID photos, she looked too young and too thin and too pale under a mane of reddish-brown hair.

He hadn’t recognized her name—Wanda Maximoff—but he did know the name _ von Strucker _. Between the information in her file and what Romanova was able to add, James got the gist of the kid’s story. Parents dead and her twin brother badly injured during the rise of civil unrest in Sokovia. Two orphaned youths, falling for promises of power and volunteering for von Strucker’s experiments without really knowing what they were signing up for. Being changed, experimented on, and halfway-indoctrinated to Hydra’s manifesto before being found by SHIELD when Romanova led a raid on von Strucker’s lab a few months ago.

James picks up the tablet Tony gave him and flicks through the information there, skimming the details of the plan, the tech. He arrives at the Maximoff girl’s file again, and gives it a closer read. And fuck, she’s only sixteen. Just a kid, both her and her brother. 

There’s a file on him, too. Pietro Maximoff. Von Strucker used another one of these magic stones to alter both these kids, but while Wanda ended up with some kind of psychic mind-powers—and the sort-of-precognition that Romanova mentioned earlier—her brother wasn’t so lucky. The experiments just made him sick, almost fatally so. His file lists him as currently in a coma in a SHIELD medical facility.

She and her brother have been in SHIELD custody ever since Romanova found them, and Wanda’s really only willing to help now because Fury and Romanova promised to have the SHIELD doctors do what they could to try and heal Pietro.

According to Romanova, because the Maximoff girl’s powers came from one of these stones, they believe that she will be able to sort of...steer James’ journey, and drop him into the right place and time to be able to make the right changes to fix the future. But she can’t tell him where he’ll end up. Apparently that’s not how it works; she can’t see the whole timeline of events and slide James into the right moment, she can only guide to an approximate point that _ feels right _ and then let go. All she can say is that it’ll be one of the pivotal turning point moments in James’ history, but given that every day in that war could’ve been his last, and every decision was life or death, he could realistically show up just about anywhere.

It’s a hell of a lot of uncertainty.

No idea where he’ll end up, no idea how he’ll fix the past to keep Steve from dying. No idea what’s going to change as a result of whatever James does or doesn’t do in the past. No idea if he even has the right to decide on behalf of the whole goddamn world whether to change their past, and their present, no matter what Romanova and Tony say will happen if he doesn’t.

But the thought of saving Steve... Seeing his face again, protecting him again, bringing him home after the war and just...living at his side. It’s a temptation James can’t resist.

It’s the most selfish thing he’s ever done, but in the end the choice isn’t that hard. For the chance to save Steve’s life, to make things right, James would sacrifice anything and everything. 

He raises his eyes from the tablet to the night sky outside the window, and sets his gaze on the faint and distant stars. “I’m coming, Steve.”

***

The next three days are a frenetic mess of preparation, very little of which James has to do himself, and so he spends most of his time watching the activity in the lab from the comfort of the corner seating area, or reviewing the plans and other technical info on his tablet. Or he reads up on his WW2 history, because while he might have lived through it, it was a long damn time ago, and the parts that he remembers most clearly are the horrors, not locations and troop movements.

Or he naps, because he’s goddamn old.

At one point he’s introduced to a couple of the scientists working with Tony. They’re both astrophysicists, Dr. Jane Foster and Dr. Eric Selvig, but they’re preoccupied with the equipment and muttering about physics back and forth, so there’s not much conversation beyond a handshake and hello.

He catches a few glimpses of the Maximoff girl when she comes to the lab to speak with Tony or Romanova, but she’s skittish and doesn’t seem to want to approach James. Yet he can feel her watching him, and even catches her eye a time or two, but he doesn’t push it. She’ll come over to him if she has something to say.

Sure enough, late on the third day he wakes from a doze that he’ll deny with every breath if someone calls him on it, and finds her sitting silently in the opposite chair. Seeing her up close just reinforces both how young she looks, and how worn down, how thin. But all he says is a gentle, “Hey, kid.”

For a moment she just continues to observe him with wide, dark eyes that seem to glow red in their depths. Eventually, though, she speaks in a low, accented voice. “Hello, Bucky.”

It startles him a little; while he figured someone would have given her his name, it’s unlikely that any of them would’ve used that old nickname. So how’d she know it? All he says, though, is, “It’s been a long time since anyone called me that.” His own doing, since after Steve, well...he certainly hadn’t wanted to hear that name said in anyone else’s voice.

“Not since February 16th, 1945,” she says, and James flinches because yeah, that would’ve been the last time. For a moment memories threaten to drag him down—blue light, Steve’s voice shouting—but he does his best to push it all away, to stay present.

She flinches, too, looks down and away. “I am sorry, I can’t always help seeing.” Her slender hands twist in the material of her skirt. And shit, James wasn’t trying to scare the kid or make her uncomfortable; she’s just caught him off guard. 

He breathes out slow to steady himself, and manages to find a small smile. “It’s okay, kid. Not your fault. But yeah, no one’s called me that since Steve...died. It’s nice to hear it again.” 

And if they both know it’s a little bit of a lie, well, neither of them acknowledge it.

“You have the chance to save him,” she says after a quiet pause. “But can you do what may be necessary?”

“What have you seen?” James asks. He’s almost afraid to hear the answer, but the words slip out regardless.

She shakes her head, but meets his eyes. “Only possibilities. Choices. But I have no way of knowing from here which way things will go once you go back. It will all depend on you. The only question is whether you can do what needs to be done, no matter the sacrifice.”

It’s not even a question; to get Steve back, James would do anything. “Yes.”

“Good,” Maximoff says quietly, voice and face serious. She slides out of the seat and stands, meets his eyes once more. “Thank you, for what you’re going to do.”

James just nods; there isn’t much else to say. As Maximoff slips quietly away, he studies the machine that will generate the portal or whatever Tony called it. The square opening in the centre is currently vacant, but he can see it’s the right size for the Cube. The Tesseract. Not just a power source, or a myth, but the key to a door that James doesn’t really understand.

Maybe he should be afraid of what’s coming, but he’s old, and he’s tired, and if the last thing he does in this life is try to save Steve, then he’s okay with this being where his story ends.

Maximoff doesn’t say it out loud, but she doesn’t have to; James knows they both understand. 

There’s always a sacrifice.

***

James wakes on his fourth day in the Tower to the sound of JARVIS’ voice informing him that the equipment in the lab is set up and ready.

Time to go.

It feels...not anticlimactic, exactly, but he can’t find a better word as he slowly dresses and makes his way to the elevator and down to the lab floor. It feels like just any other day, where James is visiting his godson and going to admire his latest project.

Not like a day where he’s going to go somewhere there’s no coming back from except to take the long way around.

Even with only a half dozen people, the lab still manages to feel busy as all of them dart around machines, hands flying across computer consoles and holo-displays, calling out science terms and what James thinks are safety checks.

Wanda’s there, a slim figure standing still and quiet off to one side of the space. She gives him a little nod when she meets his eye, but doesn’t approach. He considers for a moment going over there himself, but the way she holds herself away from everyone, he’s pretty sure she won’t appreciate the company.

Instead he just nods back and shuffles his way through the mess of the lab toward where he can hear Tony and another male voice snapping at each other. James recognizes the other man from Tony’s files. Stephen Strange, formerly a surgeon and now apparently some kind of magical-mystical guy who can control the green Time stone. They’re arguing about something to do with the machine that the green stone is to be slotted into, but it’s all science jargon and James decides he can’t be bothered at this point trying to figure it out. 

Either these machines and magic rocks are going to do what Tony said, or they won’t. Simple as that, and whether James understands all the science babble doesn’t make any difference.

Fury, Romanova—and unexpectedly, the pilot from before, Barton—are standing nearby, but out of the way of Tony and the other scientists rushing around. James moves to stand beside them, meeting Romanova’s eyes before nodding at Barton and Fury.

Fury stood straight, arms crossed and his eyes on Tony, but addressed James as he walks over. “Ready to go, Sergeant Barnes?”

“As I’ll ever be,” James replies, because what else is he gonna say at this point?

“Guess that’ll have to do,” Fury says with a short nod before striding away toward Tony.

“Hard to be ready for something completely unknown,” James says mostly to himself, but of course Romanova and Barton are still standing there.

“Except in a way, it’s not unknown at all,” Romanova says with a smirk. “After all, you lived through it all once already.”

James grunts in annoyance. “You’re not making it better, Romanova.”

She just shrugs. “I wasn’t trying to.” Barton fights a smile but James can see it, anyway, and he scowls at them both. Couple’a wise-ass spies. 

But he supposes that’s about as much of a goodbye as he can expect from Romanova. “Take care of yourself, Natashenka.” Barton looks surprised at hearing the nickname, but Romanova just nods.

Tony calls over and motions to James, and he figures that’s his cue. The machines are humming to life as Tony’s quick gestures flip switches and fly across keyboards. 

There isn’t anything else to say, really, so James crosses the lab to stand at the base of the platform at the center of all the equipment. Turning, he watches as Selvig and Foster approach the electromagnet-looking thing with a heavy silver case. Blue light pours out when Selvig opens the lid and James steels himself against the instinctive shiver of fear. He wants to turn away but can’t, so just watches as Foster carefully lifts the Cube out of the case and slots it into the machine. James knows the instant it’s in place, because the equipment _ really _ starts screaming, louder and at a higher frequency than before. 

The wizard-looking guy Strange is standing next to the other podium, and slowly takes his medallion off. Strange slots the medallion into place and waves his hands over it. James sees the green glow as the gold case slides open, and after that things move very quickly.

James’ eyes are drawn back to the Tesseract as it brightens, always that nightmare blue. Tony is yelling at the other scientists but James can’t hear the words over the roar of the equipment. As the energy levels peak, Tony slams a series of switches. The Tesseract and the Time stone glow impossibly bright, waves of green and blue light clashing until both stones blast energy toward the other. Where they clash in the middle over the platform it’s so bright that everyone in the room squints or looks away, but then there’s a deafening noise like something sucking all the air out of the room except no, they’re all still breathing, and James sees a tear in nothing, in the fabric of reality, expanding until there’s a pool of shimmering calm surrounded by a roiling torrent of blue and green energy.

The portal.

“Time to go!” Tony yells from behind the control panels, and James nods. One deep breath, and he begins to move forward, walking toward that nightmare made real. One step, two, three….

He realizes Maximoff is close behind him, and he sees red in her eyes and red tendrils drifting in the air around them both, coming from her hands as she waves them slowly in his direction. “I will guide you as best I can to where you need to be, but there are no guarantees with what I see. I cannot stop or bring you back once you pass the horizon of the portal.” The red intensifies, thickens around him, and he swears he feels it inside his body, his mind, his very soul. “Good luck, Bucky Barnes.”

And then there’s nothing left to do but go forward. With a deep breath, James steps into the storm of the portal, into the feel of wind and electricity arcing around him, though him, and Steve’s name is on his lips and Steve’s face is the last image in his thoughts as everything he is disintegrates.

***

The silence in the lab is deafening in the wake of the portal closing behind James. Tony looks around at the handful of people standing there—Romanov and Fury, Maximoff, Strange, Selvig and Foster. Now that it’s done, the portal closed and machines powered down…

“How are we going to know if it worked? If he succeeded?” Fury asks the question hovering between them in the air.

Wanda’s reply is quiet. “We won’t.”


	3. Chapter 3

* * *

Pain like cold fire pulls Bucky up out of the darkness. _ Where am I? What’s happening? _ He can’t move, can’t see, only feels a hard surface beneath him.

A low noise resolves itself into his own voice mumbling his service number over and over. “Buchanan, Sergeant James Barnes. Three-two-five-five-seven-zero-three-eight.” He tries to stop but can’t; he’s not even sure if he’s speaking out loud or if the words are just in his head. 

He can’t think. What’s going on? Where is he? As he emerges further into consciousness, memories jumble together in his head: hours, days of pain at the hands of Zola and his techs; weeks of labour and beatings in the warehouse moving weapons and equipment he can’t identify… All this is overlaid with images of a bright blue-black maw of swirling energy...facing off against a slim, too-young redhead _ Natashenka _ ...his own face in the mirror but he looks so _ old _…

He remembers, though it’s disjointed; he’s in Zola’s lab now, _ again _ , when minutes ago he was somewhere else...Stark’s lab, but not Howard. Tony. Howard’s son, because Bucky had been in...2015...except he’s back, in this lab, in pain. Was any of it real? They sent him back here. _ Why would they, why _…?

He tries to move and can’t, straps biting into his arms and wrists and chest. His muscles don’t want to obey either, and it’s all he can do to try and shift position. He can’t seem to stop mumbling, _ three-two-five-five-seven-zero-three-eight _ , _ Sergeant Barnes, James Buchanan. _

Something else—words, a memory of a voice, female and accented. “_ You will no doubt be disoriented, but you must concentrate on who you are, on your memories of this place and time. If you lose yourself then you will be truly lost. _”

_ What place and time does she mean? _ His head flops limply to the side as he tries to look around with eyes that don’t want to stay open, that can’t focus on anything for more than a second. Nothing but the same gray walls, rough concrete, a single dim bulb hanging from the ceiling. He isn’t sure how long he’s been here, the days all blurring together.

More echoes drift through his thoughts. Hallucinations maybe? He thinks he’s been seeing things and hearing things each time the scientists came with their drugs and serums… “_ We can send you back, but it is not a precise thing. I can guide you, somewhat, to be sure you are where you need to be, but the exact moment is something I cannot know.” _

If he closes his eyes he can almost see the owner of that voice; young and too thin, dark eyes and long hair. Fire...no, red fog around her hands. A name floats to the surface. Wanda. Witch.

Another voice. Tony. _ “We’re gonna send you back in time, Uncle Buck. I know it sounds like science fiction, and it was until literally now when I turn this beast on and we start the party.” _

Back in time.

Like a key turning a lock, his mind is flooded with information as though it had been sitting there just waiting for an opportunity. So many more images and people, and as his mind parses through it all he realizes there’s a whole _ life _ that he can remember, countless years longer than his own twenty-six. SHIELD. Agent Barnes. Alone and old and full of regret.

He can still feel the the last round of Zola’s drugs coursing like dull fire through his body, making his thoughts slow and his muscles limp. But the more he concentrates on the memories flooding his mind, the clearer they become.

It’s like he remembers two versions of yesterday, one overlapping the other; waking up on the floor in a cage with other soldiers, sick and sweating; and travelling in a Quinjet, talking to Tony and Natashenka, standing in front of a swirling, roaring blue vortex and _ stepping into it _…

He even remembers being on this table, now, again, for the first time. For the last time.

He’s still not sure he isn’t hallucinating, but if what he’s thinking is true, and not just his mind playing tricks trying to escape the torture, then he’s been here before, and he knows what happens next…

He tries to wrest control of his body from the lethargy but the drugs are still too thick, his mouth too rote. “Three-two-five-five-seven-zero-three-eight, Sergeant Barnes, James Buchanan.” He drifts for a moment, lost in the repetition, until the sound of distant gunfire filters into his hearing. It’s enough for him to focus his thoughts back to the other memories in his head.

If he’s been here before, then he knows, he _ knows _ what happens next. Please God let it be real, let _ this _be real—

“Bucky!” 

_ Steve _ . It’s Steve, big and blond and wide eyed with worry, filling Bucky’s field of vision, blocking out everything except the wondrous hope pouring into his body like pure light. He gasps out, “Steve?” and smiles because it’s _ Steve _. 

Because Bucky remembers this, too. He’d been sure he was dreaming, or hallucinating, or that he’d died and Steve in all his glory was there to meet him and take him to heaven. But it’s real—it was real then and it’s real again now—and it’s all Bucky can do to reach out and clutch at Steve as strong hands tear the restraints away and lift Bucky from the table straight into a tight embrace.

The sound of explosions and gunfire draw Bucky’s attention, and Steve starts urging him out into the hall. “Come on, Buck, we gotta go.” They seem to be headed away from the loudest of the explosions, thank god, but the gunfire sounds like it’s coming from all around them so no matter where they go they’re headed right into something, which is just fucking great.

Except when he concentrates on those other memories, he remembers that it’s the soon-to-be Commandos and other prisoners wreaking havoc as they destroy the base and escape. He has a memory of a campfire, and DumDum retelling how he and Gabe grabbed a tank and blasted the hell out of any Hydra assholes they could find. _ I’ve never driven a tank before but I fuckin’ liked it. Liked blowing those Nazi bastards to hell even more. _

Jogging unsteadily in Steve’s wake through a maze of dark hallways and empty rooms, he knows what happens next.

Bucky lets the strange feeling of remembering future memories wash over him, and hopes to hell it’ll get less disorienting when he’s not drugged to the gills and half-starved. 

***

Bucky tosses a twig onto the fire and looks around at the other survivors—escapees—from the Hydra facility. More than a hundred men huddle around a handful of small fires scattered among the trees, exhausted, half starved and many of them injured. The escape from the factory is only a few hours behind them, and it’s dangerous to still be in enemy territory but they couldn’t go any further without a rest. 

Between the damage done by the escaping soldiers and the self-destruct system, there wasn’t much left of the base—or of the Hydra soldiers. Turns out that a bunch of prisoners escaping from torture weren’t all that forgiving, and any Hydra assholes that hadn’t run were dead.

Steve didn’t look _ comfortable _with it, but he seemed to understand that these men needed to get some measure of payback for what they’d endured, and so far he appeared willing to just let it go.

But Steve stepped forward, too, and started giving directions to those able to help to find survivors, or collect dog tags and other identifying items from the deceased, tasking others with ransacking any outbuildings still standing for provisions and supplies that might be useful for keeping the rest of them alive long enough to make it back to safety. 

And all these men, these seasoned soldiers just..._ did _ it. Hardly a question or a moment of disagreement, and dozens of half-starved, near-feral soldiers fresh off a battle high just started shuffling around doing whatever Steve asked them to. _ Because _ he asked them to. Because he was Captain America.

Even Bucky started moving, limping toward the line of vehicles that sat far enough away to have escaped the blast zone, and worked silently side by side with Dernier to hot-wire the trucks to get them running. Better for the injured if they could manage to take a couple vehicles.

He’d discovered during the wild escape from the factory that if he sort of let his mind drift then events just seemed to happen the way he remembers them. His body moves almost without direction, except for the strange way he can still hear his own thoughts like a pair of speakers playing two different songs. That whole showdown with the Red Skull on the walkway, the factory a burning hellscape around them...it felt like a dream. 

Bucky had allowed himself to ride the wave, and tried his best not to fight it. With a strange feeling of never-ending déjà vu he’d seen Steve and Schmidt beating the hell out of each other, saw Schmidt peel his own goddamn face off. It wasn’t any less disturbing to see that creepy red face emerge from under pale skin for effectively the second time.

Then Bucky’s body was moving and he was crawling out onto a spindly railing suspended over the pits of hell and jumping with wildly flailing limbs when the metal gave way with a piercing shriek, scrambling over the ledge onto the dubious safety of the far walkway, and _ motherfucking fuck _ but living it and reliving it at the same time made it so fucking clear how fucking insane it was and how much of a fucking miracle it was that he made it out of here alive in the first place.

Except he remembers this part too, turning back to see Steve trapped on the far side of the flames. No crossbeams or railings left for him to use, hearing Steve’s voice, deep and familiar and oh so stupid, shouting above the roar of the flames, “Go! Get out of here!”

And Bucky’s own voice screaming back, the words the same but the feeling behind them seventy-years and a lifetime of loss stronger, “No! Not without you!”

Which of course then resulted in God’s greatest idiot Steven Grant Rogers taking a running leap over the pit of fire like he thought he could just fucking fly. The good Lord must truly love idiots, though, because Steve snagged the very edge of the walkway with one hand and managed to drag himself up. Then they were running near-blind through snoke and fire and crashing _ through a goddamn wall what the fuck Steve? _ and suddenly they were out in the open air where the last of the jailbreak fighting was winding down.

Now here they are, less than two days’ march from the ruins of the base at Azzano, huddling in the dark, afraid to risk a fire while they’re still in enemy territory but it’s too cold not to. Barely any supplies considering how many men there are, three trucks serving as transport for the worst of the injured but starting to get low on gas, and the _ panzer _ that DumDum insisted on stealing with a brash, “It’s running, ain’t it? Better us than them.” 

Bucky’s willing to admit it makes a hell of a statement, especially if they end up crossing paths with an enemy patrol.

Steve’s beside him, map unfolded across his knee as he speaks quietly with Falsworth and they try to chart the best way out of the area and back to friendly territory. Steve’s information about troop movements is more recent than anything held by the prisoners, but since he apparently went straight from _ performer _ to _ leader of a rescue mission _, he wasn’t privy to everything and his knowledge certainly isn’t complete. Plus, they have no way of knowing what sort of communications the Hydra assholes had at the Azzano base, and whether a message calling for reinforcements had gone out before its destruction.

Bucky leans just enough for his shoulder to rest against Steve’s. Enough to comfort himself with the contact, but not enough for anyone to notice. He remembers this, remembers the tireless slog of marching through the depths of the European forest on an empty stomach, the days of rain and sleet, and nights in the fireless November dark. He knows without checking gauges, because he remembers, that the trucks will run out of fuel over the next day, and the _ panzer _ will be dead in a field with an empty gas tank another days after that.

He studies Steve out of the corner of his eye. If he’s got all his future-memories sorted out, then he’s supposed to be changing things, right? Trying to set them on a different path, one that saves Steve. Part of him still wonders if he’s lost his mind, but maybe he can just...test it out. The first time around they lost the _ panzer _, the trucks, and five men from among the worst of the injured who succumbed to their wounds during the last stretch of the march. Steve had taken it hard, had wanted to do more than was possible by one man no matter how much super-strength he had.

Maybe Bucky can change things this time.

So Bucky leans toward Steve, ignoring the twinge in his bruised ribs, and taps his finger against the map at a spot a few miles from their current location. In his memories of the first time, they’d skirted around the area, avoiding it completely. Might as well try a different course this time, and see what kind of difference, of changes, that comes out of it.

“Look, we’re gonna lose the vehicles soon, unless we can get our hands on some gasoline, or diesel for the _ panzer _ . If I remember right, there should be a small German base around here. I say we take a small team. In and out, steal all the fuel and supplies we can carry. Night mission. No engagement.” He rests back and looks from the map to Steve. “Some of the injured men are shaping up all right and could probably manage to keep up, but there’s a few that ain’t gonna be able to march no matter what. We need at least one set of wheels. If we gotta choose between gas for the trucks and diesel for the _ panzer _, then go for the diesel. The big one makes more of a statement, and has all the firepower.”

Steve studies the map for a few minutes before he nods. “You know some of these guys better than I do, Bucky, so let me know who you think should come with me.”

Bucky groans internally, because goddammit, he should’ve seen that coming. He’s trying to keep Steve _ out of trouble _, not send him right into it. “Steve—”

“I know that tone, Buck, so don’t waste your breath. I’m going. I’m in better shape than most of these guys, plus some...other advantages.” He’s referring to the super-strength, Bucky knows, but they haven’t had a minute to themselves yet to actually _ have _ that conversation so he has to keep quiet in front of the others. “But even I’ve only got two hands for carrying, so pick me a team.”

Bucky groans, but nods in the face of Steve’s goddamn earnest expression. It’s the same look that’s been getting him into trouble since 1923. But he feels a pang, too, since it’s also the first time seeing that look since 1944 the first time around, and seeing it again is just...so much. Bucky’s heart aches in his chest, some combination of happiness and longing warring inside him.

But they’re in a makeshift camp surrounded by other soldiers, and Steve never knew about any of these thoughts the first time around; Bucky had these feelings then, and he has them even moreso now. All he does, however, is press his shoulder a little harder against Steve’s for a moment before moving away again.

They plan the resupply mission with Steve, Bucky, Gabe and Morita, leaving DumDum and Dernier nominally in charge of the camp. They gather up as many ropes and straps and rucksacks as they can to make it easier to carry back whatever they find.

It’s not hard for the four of them to reach the small base after an hour’s quick march, even with the stealth abilities seriously lacking in all three who weren’t Bucky. Steve especially might as well be an elephant for how much noise he makes tromping through the underbrush.

On approach to the edge of the Hydra base, Bucky makes the trio stay put while he slinks off silently through the trees—recon duty being best left to the only one of them who was _ least likely to alert the guards, Steven _.

By the time he comes back a half-hour later, he’s got a good grip on what they’re dealing with; less than a dozen guards, none of whom look particularly well trained or difficult to handle.

As he slips back to where Steve and the others are waiting, he fights a moment of disorientation. He remembers a different version of today, competing with his current perceptions, and it’s so distracting—he’s sitting up in a tree counting guards, but his mind shows images of a different past, a day of endless marching and dwindling food rations and one young private finally succumbing to his injuries.

Shaking his head to try and bring himself back to the current moment, he fills them in on the situation at the Hydra base.

It all goes surprisingly smoothly. Bucky goes in first with his rifle and takes out the lone guards on the perimeter, one shot each, clearing the way for Steve and Morita to approach. More importantly, he’s giving Gabe space to circle around the far side and take out their radio antenna before they realize they’re under attack

Less than twenty minutes, and it’s done—the Hydra goons are taken out and the tiny base is empty. Bucky stays up in his tree, rifle scope scanning the perimeter to make sure there aren’t any stragglers, while the other three search the base for supplies. So far, everything’s clear.

It’s hard for him to concentrate, though, as old memories slide through his mind—alternate memories now, he supposes, if he understood what Stark and the others tried to explain about this whole thing. But it’s distracting, the near-constant feeling that he should be doing—or was in the middle of doing—something else.

In the end, they come away with a half-dozen jerrycans of diesel for the _ panzer _, a decent amount of whatever-rations (none of them knew enough German to figure out the labels on the tins and boxes) and a bunch of firearms and ammo. Bucky, Jones and Morita grab as much as they can carry and still move quickly, but the bulk of it goes on Steve. They load him up like a mule and still he’s standing straight and able to outmarch all of them despite looking like a mountain comprised of rucksacks and jerrycans.

They make it back to the rest of the soldiers without incident, which is about as much as Bucky figures they could hope for.

“We’ve got to keep moving,” Steve says as they distribute the extra supplies among the packs carried by the more able-bodied soldiers. “We took down their radio but eventually someone’s gonna show up. We don’t want to be anywhere near here when they do.”

Bucky nods and starts marshalling everyone while Dernier and DumDum refill the gas tanks on the trucks and _ panzer _ . They’re on the move again before long, and Bucky falls into step at Steve’s side like always. He’s satisfied with this because it _ worked _ —he’s changed events from what happened before, lived an entirely different day and had Steve choose an entirely different path. He can _ feel _the difference, and if he pokes at his memories he can still recall this same day as a day of monotonous marching, not the successful infiltration of a tiny Hydra base.

Stark and the little witch-girl might be a bit crazy, but Bucky can’t help but smile; this was going to work.

***

Bucky learns three things during the long march back to base camp.

One, that these soldiers seem entirely willing to follow Steve’s orders, despite his title of “Captain” being essentially propaganda; whether it’s his size, the commanding tone of voice or just the damn earnestness, Bucky isn’t sure. But dozens of soldiers, all different ranks and units, Americans and Europeans alike, they all listen to Steve with complete faith in whatever he’s saying, as though the idiot in spangled pajamas who broke them out of the base knows exactly what he’s doing.

Two, that Steve in this big new healthy body doesn’t really need Bucky anymore, not in all the ways he used to. Bucky can remember struggling with these feelings in the first go-round, too—and just like then, he pushes the unwelcome thoughts away to deal with later.

But the third thing Bucky learns is the hardest, and that’s that even though he can change things, to do things differently than these memories he has, there’s something that still sort of...pulls things back to how they played out the first time—which he knows, now, because the same soldiers still died on the march. Even with the extra tank as transport, and the increased rations.

Steve took it just as hard as Bucky remembers from the first time, no matter what assurances Bucky—hell, everyone—gave him, telling him that he did all he could. But Bucky sees in Steve’s too-straight shoulders and stiff nods the guilt that follows him like a black cloud, whispering that he _ should have done more _. 

But while Bucky hurts for Steve, and does his best to comfort him, his own conscience aches, too, with everything he’s keeping from Steve. He feels so strongly that the deaths of those men are on him—because he’d tried to save them, tried to change the outcome, and even with his knowledge still failed.

And it worried him, the fact that he definitely changed what happened on the march, lived an entirely different day, but in the end the outcome was still the same. But seeing Steve in the flesh again and not just in faded memories, knowing that this crazy plan of Stark’s might actually work given they really did manage to send him back in time or whatever the hell this is—well, it was only making Bucky more determined to succeed. To save Steve.

He can’t stand the thought of living his life without Steve a second time.

But right now Bucky’s sitting in the medical tent, getting cleaned up and his injuries treated. He remembers this, too; fresh out of the hellhole of Azzano, twitchy as all hell, and lying to the nurses because he’s not nearly as injured as he ought to be. Now he knows it was the bastardized version of the serum currently running through his veins, but at the time all he knew was that he felt _ different _and didn’t want anyone to know.

He waves away the last of the nurses and stands to pull his shirt back on. “I’m fine, it’s nothing but scratches and bruises, and you already fixed me right up.” 

“Sergeant Barnes, you really should stay and let someone keep an eye on you—” the nurse tries to usher him back onto the medical cot, but Bucky just shakes his head and sidesteps her neatly on his way toward the exit. 

“Ma’am, I promise you I’m feeling just swell.” He softened his refusal with a smile, but doesn’t stop walking. “Plus I’ve got to go report in to my C.O. before it gets late.” He refuses to feel bad for the slight deception as he slips out of the medical tent and starts walking across the muddy field toward the line of officer’s tents off to the side. It’s not entirely untrue, since he does want to see Steve, to talk to him.

Steve had pointed out the officers’ quarters earlier, before leaving Bucky with the nurses and getting dragged off by Phillips and Agent Carter to debrief, and probably to endure a thorough dressing-down.

Steve had looked worried beneath all his earnest certainty that he’d done the right thing—and Bucky remembers that he didn’t get court martialed or anything, so he’s confident enough in those memories to go look for Steve’s tent and wait for him there. He bums a couple smokes off a passing Private, and settles himself onto a crate shoved up against the outside corner of the tent. 

The encampment is busy with people and vehicles, but Bucky’s out of the way enough to be easily overlooked. It’s the first time he’s really had to himself, without being shoulder to shoulder with other soldiers, since waking up on that lab table. The escape, then the week-long march through the European forest, hadn’t left him much time to process everything going on.

He flicks ash from the end of his cigarette and studies his hand. His memory overlays the strong, tanned fingers and broad, calloused palm with the image of wrinkled flesh and age spots and palsied shakes. An old man’s hand.

If he closes his eyes, and ignores the sounds of the camp around him, the other set of memories comes to the forefront of his mind. Half a lifetime of memories living alongside his current experience. He lived through the War, joined the SSR along with Dugan, Jones, and Morita, spent forty-odd years as an agent. In and out of warzones and mission after mission. Never married—never even came close—because no one ever quite measured up to Steve.

The strangeness of feeling free of pain and old age even while he remembers the ache of joints and wheezing breaths overwhelms him for a moment, his mind unable to separate the different sensations. He snaps his eyes open and takes a deep breath, gives his head a shake. Looks around to orient himself, and though the confusion doesn’t wholly disappear, it lessens its grip.

He knows where he is, and _ when _ he is—back in time to 1943, in the Allied camp, and waiting for Steve to come back from getting yelled at by Phillips. Even though it’s improbable, he has to believe that this is real and not some bizarre, elaborate delusion, which means he needs to start thinking and planning.

_ What can I change to make sure that I can save Steve? _

Because that’s the point of this whole thing, isn’t it? 

God, seeing Steve again…. He’d forgotten the impact of Steve’s..._ everything _ when he turns his attention on Bucky. The feelings well up at just thinking Steve’s name, feelings Bucky had though he’d managed to put aside over the long decades alone.

He shakes his head at himself; no point in lying. Steve may have been gone, but the love Bucky felt for him never faded, not for a moment. No matter that it had always been unspoken, that he did his best never to let Steve know, not only because he didn’t want to risk either of them getting arrested but also because while part of him is sure Steve would never cut him out of his life simply for the sin of loving him that way, Bucky’s nevertheless always been afraid to risk it. Being close to Steve, having that place by his side, it’s always been enough for him.

But as he snuffs out the last of his cigarette, a little voice in the back of his head points out, _ Aren’t you trying to do things differently this time? _

And isn’t that something to think about...

***

It’s nearly dark by the time Steve comes striding back across the camp, looking some combination of bemused and righteous. Bucky can’t help but smile to himself as he stands up from where he’s been leaning against the crates outside Steve’s tent. “Pretty nice digs they’ve got you set up with here,” he teases.

Steve stops in front of Bucky, looking embarrassed as his gaze cuts across to the tent. It’s large as far as Army tents go, spacious and in better condition than a lot of the others. He rubs one hand against the back of his neck in a gesture Bucky fondly recognizes as discomfort. “Yeah, the brass insisted that Captain America have proper officers quarters even though I’ve only been a dancing monkey since I got here. Since I got all this, really.” He waves his hand sheepishly to encompass his new-to-original-Bucky body.

Hearing Steve’s words feels like the worst kind of déjà vu, strong and immediate. Thankfully, Bucky remembers exactly how he reacted the first time and is able to just let the words fall naturally from his tongue. “Yeah, Stevie, why don’t you tell me about _ all this _, huh? Thought you said you weren’t gonna do anything stupid while I was gone.”

Steve smirks a little, but it’s wary; he knows Bucky’s pissed and yeah, Bucky can feel the surge of those emotions. “Your memory’s wrong, then. I never said I agreed to that.”

“Punk,” Bucky snarks back, but it’s fond instead of angry, and Steve knows it.

“Jerk,” is Steve’s quiet reply, then he gestures toward the tent flap. “Why’re you sittin’ out here on the ground? Should’a waited inside where it’s...well, not really warmer, but probably more comfortable.” He pushes inside, Bucky following close behind.

“I ain’t about to just waltz into Captain America’s private quarters without permission, Rogers,” Bucky says sardonically. “Probably would’a meant a court martial or something.”

Steve snorts. “Hardly. ‘Sides, Phillips is the only one around here, this close to the front lines, who has any real authority. And after that debriefing I’m pretty sure he figured out that the main reason I went to Azzano in the first place was to go after you.” He sets the shield down against the side of the bed and sits down next to it. “Pretty sure he’s not gonna get in your face about it, though, at least not today.”

Bucky just looks at Steve for a long minute, and even though he’s been here before, he feels overwhelmed all over again by how changed Steve looks from his tiny Brooklyn self, and how long it’s been since they’ve been alone together and not surrounded by other people. There’s something he remembers thinking the first time but getting sidetracked and never saying, but he refuses to let the chance pass this time. “I don’t think I’ve said this yet, but...thank you for coming to get me, Steve. Even though for all you knew I was already dead, it still...I… Thanks.”

“God, Buck, of course. There’s nowhere you can go where I wouldn’t come for you,” Steve replies, and it’s so sincere, so _ Steve _, that Bucky’s heart aches in his chest.

Because he knows that, at least once, it wasn’t true, and Bucky had to go far into the future alone. But all he says is, “I know.”

***

They’re back in London a few days later, Bucky and Steve and many of the rescued soldiers who were either being given some leave time, needed medical care, or were being discharged and sent home. Carter and Phillips drag Steve straight to the SSR headquarters to debrief properly, which kicks off nearly a week of briefings and planning meetings as Steve recounts everything that happened during the rescue, and marks up maps with the locations of the Hydra bases he saw on a map in Schmidt’s factory. 

Steve pulls Bucky into as many of those meetings as he can, citing the fact that Bucky’s been inside one of the factories and can share details about their operations. But Bucky knows it’s as much, if not more, the fact that Steve just wants to keep him within sight. It’s an urge Bucky has as well, so he doesn’t argue, and does his best to assist in the mission planning and to temper a few of Steve’s more reckless suggestions.

The guy might be a science experiment and a tactical genius, but he’s also still Steven Grant “Leap First” Rogers.

By the end of the week they’re all exhausted, with a half-dozen missions planned out, and Bucky for one is ready for a goddamn drink. Even knowing the alcohol won’t do much of anything thanks to the serum, he finds comfort in the ritual and the company. There’s also a sense of ease in just letting himself slide along with the way events happened the first time, rather than trying to fight against it every second.

The pub is crowded and noisy, soldiers from different regiments and countries mingling and singing and drinking, the air thick with smoke and the smell of sweat. Bucky’s nursing his beer and leaning against the bartop when Steve comes back from talking to the soon-to-be Commandos. Even though Bucky knows their team won’t earn that name for awhile yet, he can’t help but use it inside his own head since that’s how he’s always remembered them.

Bucky also remembers that all the Commandos agree to follow Steve back into the fight, but he sits here pretending he didn’t already know. “See, I told you,” James smirks, but even he can hear the affection in his voice. “They’re all idiots.” 

Steve, the little shit, just smirks right back. “How about you? Ready to follow Captain America into the jaws of death?”

Bucky manages to keep the smile on his face even as his heart aches, because unless he manages to fix this then death_ is _the only outcome. But even through his fear of failure, he can’t help but fall into the banter that he and Steve always have. “Hell no. That little guy from Brooklyn who was too dumb to run away from a fight, I’m following him.” And he really can’t help himself; the lure of Steve being here and alive and standing so close, that a little bit of his true feelings seep into his words, making them sound far flirtier than he meant them to. “But you’re keeping the outfit, right?”

And Steve—god, Bucky doesn’t even know if Steve realizes what he’s doing, but his eyes flick down Bucky’s body and back up before Steve turns his head a little and hides his gaze behind his lashes. “You know what? It’s kind of growing on me.”

The shyness, the almost-blush spreading across Steve’s fair skin, and _ oh _. Bucky pauses, recognizing something in that look that he doesn’t remember catching the first time around, but which several dozen decades of another life lived in a much more accepting and open-minded time give him the context to parse out: another man’s subtle signs of interest.

That is..._ something _. Definitely a thing Bucky is going to give some thought to, because he’d always assumed that Steve didn’t lean that way. But that look between them just now...well. If Bucky manages to succeed in saving Steve, in setting them both on the path to a different future, then maybe, maybe—even with seeing Steve so smitten with Peggy and her red dress, even knowing that Steve’s never suggested before that he might feel the same as Bucky does—this could be something to talk about one day.

And even if Bucky saves Steve and sets him toward a life with Peggy instead, that’s okay too. The important part is that Steve’s around to live it. 

Bucky’s only wish is to stay by his side, whatever form that takes.


	4. Chapter 4

[ ](http://imgbox.com/MnoQatxM)

* * *

_It’s not working. _

Bucky flicks cigarette ash away before taking another drag as he stares out into the darkness. They’re on their way back to base camp after a mission, and he’s got second watch tonight. Their information indicates they are nowhere near any enemy combatants, which leaves him with far too much time to think.

And what he’s thinking is, _ it’s not working _. Thirteen fucking months and it’s not working. He’s changing things, sure, but just minor circumstances. Not outcomes, not where it counts. Every time things start going in a new direction, every time he uses whatever influence he has to take a different action, make a different choice...sure, things change. Missions are different than he remembers from the first time. New missions, new events; days that start the same and play out a new way because Bucky takes a different action, or gives someone a crucial piece of information. 

There are a few missions he remembers from before—ones that went down real bad—that he managed to get Steve and the Commandos to avoid altogether. He almost wants to laugh, but not from any real humour at the situation; if only the other Commandos knew that their unprecedented string of successful missions is largely due to Bucky’s memories of their team doing these things once before already. Knowing where to aim, what locations to avoid, remembering how they failed so they don’t make the same mistakes...

But even then it wasn’t enough. Things still shifted back, slowly but surely, until events started following the path they’d gone before, the path that always leads to a train in the mountains.

He rubs at his aching forehead. The headache is slight but never seems to go away as his mind wrestles with old memories layered on top of new; the old memories often quite different than what he was experiencing now. Living one life with another version of it constantly playing in the back of his head, forgetting that he was supposed to be changing things and letting himself fall into the flow of events until he realizes and yanks his consciousness back...it’s fucking exhausting.

Leaving him here, smoking alone in the night, contemplating the spectre of failure that haunts him nearly every waking moment. If he can’t change the timeline enough so that Steve lives, then what the hell was the point? If he goes through all this only to fail and have to live his whole life again with nothing but the memories of Steve and his own compounded failure...Bucky’s not sure he can take it.

The soft scuff of boots through the underbrush catches his attention. He recognizes the gait and knows it’s Steve, so he speaks softly without turning around. “You’re early.”

Steve huffs a soft laugh as he comes into view. “I couldn’t sleep anyway, so figured I’d come relieve your watch.” He doesn’t quite meet Bucky’s eyes though, which gives him away instantly.

“Bullshit,” Bucky retorts, teasing, and Steve sighs. 

“Yeah, yeah. I _ really _can’t sleep, but I also just wanted to check on you,” Steve says. “I know you haven’t been feeling right for a while now.” He pauses, looking out into the night instead of at Bucky. “Not since Azzano. And, I’m sorry that all the missions and planning have kept me too busy to take care of you properly.”

“Steve, you don’t have to…” _ You don’t have to take care of me, _ is what Bucky tries to say, but the words fade away before he can get them out. He wants to protest, but he knows now and remembers from before that his body changed thanks to Zola’s serum and he’s still trying to hide it from Steve. Plus there’s the double-memories always hovering, dragging him along or making him fight against them to change something. He knows it’s making him act strangely; he knows he can’t even attempt to explain.

“Ah, Steve, come on. I’m sorry for worrying you, but...I’m okay. Or as okay as I’m gonna get in the middle of a war.” He clasps his hand on Steve’s left shoulder, an old gesture that he’s missed. “Honest.”

The look Steve gives him makes it clear he doesn’t believe Bucky is telling the whole truth, but he lets it go for now. They sit without talking for a time, listening to the quiet forest sounds that they’ve learned to identify as meaning they’re safe and no one else is out there moving around. Soon though, Steve shifts restlessly in a way Bucky recognizes as him being ready to talk about something uncomfortable.

“What is it, Steve?” Bucky finally asks, nudging his shoulder against Steve’s.

With a huge, gusting sigh, Steve drops his head back against the trunk of the tree. “I just wish sometimes that you’d taken your discharge and gone home where it’s safe. You deserve it after everything that happened at Azzano. But I was selfish and asked you to stay even though I knew it would be hard on you.” Steve clenches his jaw before adding, “I did it anyway, because I knew you’d say yes. After missing you for the year you were at bootcamp, and then missing you after you were deployed, I just...missed you and I wished you were with me. I was too selfish to let you go again, and I’m...sorry for doing that to you.”

When it’s clear Steve’s done talking, Bucky shakes his head with a half-laugh, half-sigh. Because _ of course _ Steve would take all the blame on himself and feel guilty over this, even though it was Bucky’s choice to stay. Where else would he go except right where he belongs? That’s always been at Steve’s side.

“Steve, you _ dumbass, _ I stayed because I wanted to. Because someone should be here who knows you, and who can try and curb your more idiotic ideas,” Bucky says. He keeps to himself just how badly he’d missed Steve, and how much stronger his feelings have been since they were apart before his rescue—feelings that are a hundred times stronger than the first time around, because now he also remembers the long years living a life without Steve, a lifetime with only his regrets.

All he says, though, is, “I missed you, too, Steve. It’s the reason I stayed.” Not the only reason of course. It’s hard to keep the true extent of his feelings to himself, and he’s sure one of these days he’ll slip up. He can only hope to God that they’re alone when he does, since the last thing he needs to do is get Steve and himself blue-carded and dishonourably discharged. He’s pretty sure that’s not how he’s supposed to be changing things, even if it would pretty effectively get Steve out of the war. He doesn’t want them to rot in jail, instead.

He’d been sure he gave himself away that night in the pub, given the exchange with Steve. But Steve hasn’t been acting any differently, so Bucky figures his secret is still safe for the moment.

However, every day it seems a little less vital that he keep his feelings to himself this time around.. He never admitted this to Steve before, and the closer he gets to the day Steve died, the more he wants to say something; to confess before he loses the chance forever.

He still isn’t sure, is afraid of upsetting or alienating Steve, no matter how much he tries to tell himself that wouldn’t happen. While he doesn’t truly think Steve would leave him or push him away, the fear of it is still enough to keep Bucky silent.

Eventually Steve speaks, bringing up the plan for tomorrow’s return to basecamp, and Bucky lets the change in topic move them forward. He spends a few moments picking through his memories; this was a mission they’d done before, though things were much more successful this time around. The first time, they’d run into a Hydra patrol and it turned into a frustrating firefight, so Bucky suggests a different route that he knows will avoid the ambush and get them the rest of the way back to friendly territory. He doesn’t say why, but he doesn’t have to; Steve takes him at his word and that trust is humbling.

“Sounds good, Buck,” Steve says. “Listen, I’ve got the rest of your watch. Head back and get some sleep.”

The thought of returning to the tent alone… Bucky shakes his head. Even if he tried, he wouldn’t be able to sleep. He’s too worried about the enormity of what he’s trying to do, and he can’t escape the feeling that as long as he has Steve in sight, he’ll always be able to protect him. 

“You can’t just _ not _ sleep, Buck,” Steve replies, and shifts his position until he can pull Bucky under his arm and against his shoulder so that Bucky can rest. Rest is the last thing on Bucky’s mind when he’s this close to Steve, though, and he’s glad the darkness hides the heat in his cheeks. They’ve been sharing tents on missions, and sometimes whatever quarters they have in London with the rest of the SSR since space was usually at a premium. They haven’t been so close like this in years, not since the winter of ‘41 when Steve spent nearly three weeks in bed with pneumonia and they shared the bed in a battle against the winter cold.

Even though Steve kind of smells—stinks, really, which is unsurprising since they’ve been out on this mission for more than two weeks at this point and they’re all getting a little rank—he also smells unmistakably of home and something uniquely _ Steve _, and Bucky finds himself more comfortable than he’s been in months.

For a moment he struggles against the urge to say something—to tell Steve how much he means to Bucky—but he doesn’t want to lose this moment between them. So he does his best to close his eyes and sleep, secure with knowing that Steve is there to watch over him until dawn.

Tomorrow he’ll go back to trying to change history, to worrying about failure, to being afraid of what they’ve done and what’s still to come.

Tonight, he has this.

***

It was going to happen again. Bucky swears as he paces around the barracks, digging his hands through his hair. Nothing he did, nothing he said, none of it made any fucking difference and they were going to end up back on that _ goddamn train _. 

Because he’s almost out of time. They’ve been back in London for a week, and today was the planning meeting for that damn mission. No matter what objections Bucky tried to raise—without saying something that would confuse everyone and make them wonder why he knows something he shouldn’t, or sounding crazy by claiming he knows the future—between Phillips, Carter and Steve they’d just barrelled ahead, strategizing and discussing contingencies until they decided the mission was definitely a go.

And Bucky can’t just scream, “Steve’s going to die if we do this!” no matter how badly he wants to. No matter how loud he screams inside his own head.

Three days. They had three fucking days between now and when they would leave for that damn mountain, and Bucky could only feel himself becoming more and more frantic because he knows there’s no way to talk the team or the brass out of it. He’s honestly not even sure if the weird elastic-band-time thing would let him change the course of events now—not this close to the crucial moment. All he has left is the actual mission, and the fact that it’ll come g so close to the wire is disturbing. Where he once had months to try and change things, now he’s got less than a week.

Steve’s noticed his unease, too, and Bucky can see him struggling not to say something. For the most part Steve’s been chalking Bucky’s moods up to the stress of the year since Azzano and the fact that they’re in the middle of a war, but they know each other well enough that Steve can tell something else is bothering him. It was the same last time, too, though it was only the secret of the serum between them then; now, that secret’s been compounded by Bucky’s dual memories, by the fact that he travelled through time. He feels stretched thin, and so, so_ tired _.

He pulls out his cigarettes, lighting one and taking a deep drag, which is when he remembers that he’d quit years before...except no, that hadn’t happened yet...or had it? Half his mind is telling him he hasn’t smoked in thirty years, while the other half is raising his hand for another drag and just…

“FUCK!” he shouts and tosses the half-burnt cig on the floor, stomping on it with his boot a lot harder than necessary. His thoughts are spinning, and he slumps onto the side of a cot, leaning forward to bury his head in his hands, trying to pull himself together.

There’s got to be something he can do—_ some _solution he can come up with that means he won’t have to relive the worst day of his life.

Like lock Steve up in a basement somewhere. Just...shove him in the basement vault of the SSR office for a week until they’re past the date of the mission. Someone else can go instead of Bucky and Steve while the two of them stay away and stay safe. Stay _ alive _.

Except goddammit he knows that’s not going to work, not only because Bucky’s not actually so much of an asshole that he’ll deliberately let other members of their team risk their lives in his place, but also because everything he’s seen this past year tells him there isn’t a basement built that would be strong enough to hold Steve and his super strength if the guy was truly determined to get out.

Which brings him back to figuring out what he’ll have to do differently _ during _ the mission to change things—except it really just comes down to ‘save Steve’, whatever it takes. Whatever moment or action presents itself where Bucky can take a different action, he’ll have to take it, and hope.

He’s not sure how long he spends wallowing in a mixture of frustration and replaying his memories of the first train mission when the door opens to Gabe and Dernier chatting away in French and laughing.

“You doin’ okay there, Sarge?” Gabe asks. Dernier chimes in with an inquiring word in French, as well.

Bucky scrubs his hands against his face and let out a long sigh. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.”

He can see the concern on Gabe’s face, but Gabe doesn’t push for more. “Dernier and I are heading to the pub now that the meeting’s done. I figure we could all use a drink tonight. You coming with?”

Well, he’s not going to do anything except wallow in his thoughts if he stays here, so Bucky nods and stands. “Yeah, I’m comin’.”

***

The three of them get rather shitfaced—or Gabe and Dernier do, at least, while Bucky pretends to feel the alcohol—and over the course of a couple hours Steve and the other Commandos show up and join them. By one in the morning the pub’s closing down and the others are staggering their way out of the door, Dugan’s terrible singing rising above the other guys’ laughter.

Bucky’s still sitting at their little table in the back corner of the room, idly spinning his empty glass on the table. Steve starts to stand too, but the old bartender waves at them from where he’s cleaning up and tells them they can stay for a while if they like. Whether it’s because he recognizes Steve, or he’s just a nice old guy, Bucky’s glad to get a bit of time away from the crowded barracks and SSR offices.

Soon it’s just the two of them left, the bartender quietly clattering around in the back room. Bucky sighs; it was a good night, and he’s glad that he came out with the team, but in the end all it’s done is remind him that this was the last time they were all together before, and might very well be the last time now.

He and Steve just sit for a while, glasses empty as Bucky pretends to sober up from a non-existent drunkenness. They discuss the mission briefly, but it must be pretty clear to Steve that Bucky’s tense, and he quickly drops the subject.

They drift into silence, each lost in thought. The bar is quiet, with only the faint noises of the owner still cleaning up in the back kitchen. Bucky can’t help but compare this to the bars back in Brooklyn, both the same and different—and not only because of all the British accents.

He remembers dancing in the Brooklyn bars, close and warm with whichever girl was on his arm that night, but always keeping one eye on Steve where he hovered against the wall or at a table nursing his drink

For a moment the memory of those days is overlaid with other bars, other nights spent dancing over the decades after the War, as skirts shortened and clothing got more and more casual. Song after song the music changed from jazz and swing to rock and pop, and Bucky held the girl—or guy—close in his arms, his eyes always seeking out Steve by the wall only to find nothing but empty space.

He drifts on the memories a little, quietly humming along to the memory of a night out in Manhattan for his birthday. His fiftieth, and Peggy, Dugan and a few other friends from SHIELD had dragged him out to a bar in the city. 

Steve’s voice pulled him back to the present. “Nice sounding tune, there, Buck. Something new you heard on the radio?”

Bucky blinks and thinks back through the song in his mind and realizes it’s “A Hard Day’s Night”. _ Well, shit. _ The Beatles are certainly a solid two decades away from where they are now, and since he can’t explain that to Steve, he just shrugs it off. “Just humming, not anything specific.”

He does his best to stay in the moment and not let himself get pulled into memories of the other life he lived before. He doesn’t want or need the distraction right now, not when he’s here with Steve for real. 

He sighs, hunching over the table. It’s all so _ complicated _. Grief and joy and time travel, and memories of the first part of his life before the War. Those days feel so simple, even when they had no money and had to work all the time just to get by. But it was always just him and Steve, side by side, ever since they were kids. As he thinks about those old days, it makes him miss their younger selves even more; he finds himself missing Steve the way he used to be—skinny and short, and all Bucky’s because no one else was smart enough to see past the appearance and attitude to just how great Steve really was.

But he can’t say all that aloud, so he sighs instead. “I miss Brooklyn.”

“Me too, pal,” Steve says, leaning forward over the tabletop closer to Bucky. “I’d give up a month’s worth of rations for something from the deli down the street.”

Bucky smiles. “The one run by the Giovannis?” And it’s enough to get them rolling, trading memories back and forth for awhile. Childhood games, back alley fights. 

The old memories are good ones, and they both have a few lighthearted moments of laughter. But it’s bittersweet for Bucky, because he starts to think of all the things in his other life that he did after the War, only without Steve.

There were so many times over the years when Bucky wished Steve was there beside him, seeing how the world changed, and while he might not be drunk he’s certainly maudlin tonight, because he can’t help but say them out loud.

Thankfully he has enough sense of preservation to at least frame it as things he’d like to do in the future. “When we get back, Steve… When we get home to Brooklyn, we gotta go dancing. Every chance we get, ‘til we’re too old for it. And we should travel, for real. Not this stumbling around the middle of Europe shit.”

“Well the serum didn’t fix my two left feet,” Steve laughs. “But yeah Buck, dancing sounds real good.”

“We’ll go to the Grand Canyon,” Bucky smiles as he says it. “Like we used to dream about when we were kids. Can’t let the newest wonder of the American world miss out on that.” He smirks and kicks Steve’s leg under the table.

“Jerk,” Steve laughs, kicking back. They tussle boot-to-boot for a few minutes, giggling like the children they used to be, until the owner of the pub shuffles back into the main room to see what all the noise was about. Still laughing, they pay for their drinks and make their way outside into the dark streets.

Bucky tries to sling his arm over Steve’s shoulders the way he used to, but the guy’s got just enough of a height advantage now that it makes the attempt awkward. Steve laughs, a little too hard in Bucky’s opinion, and reverses their hold so he can wrap his arm across Bucky’s shoulders instead.

With blackout curtains across the windows of most buildings as they pass, the streets are dark and empty. But it means that the cloudless sky is bright with stars, no lamplight to dim their glitter, and Bucky tilts his head back against Steve’s arm to look at them.

He’d never seen stars like this when he was a kid, not living his whole life in New York. He feels simultaneously endless, and insignificant. 

Steve’s arm tightens briefly as he steers them around the corner of a building, and Bucky feels his eyes sting with tears even as he smiles, because he’s _ not _insignificant. Not to Steve.

He turns toward Steve, sees the edges of his profile gilded in the faint starlight, and everything sort of comes to a head, all the feelings and longing and regret of two lives burst out of him. “_ Steve— _”

All the turmoil must show in his voice, because Steve turns quickly with a concerned, “Bucky? What’s wrong?” Steve shifts them toward a gap between two bombed-out buildings, scanning their surroundings for any threat but finding none because the danger is all inside Bucky.

If this is the last time they really have alone together, if this whole time-travel business amounts to nothing but the same outcome, Bucky won’t be able to live with himself if he once again keeps all these feelings to himself.

But he has a bad feeling he can’t shake, that things will play out just like the did the first time and that somehow Bucky won’t be enough, won’t be able to do enough, to save Steve’s life. This time, Bucky doesn’t want to lose Steve without telling him the truth—that he’s always loved Steve first, and best - more than he’s ever loved anyone else. That he was always too cautious—of what others would think, and of what _ Steve _would think—to say anything, but that he needs to say it now in case something goes wrong.

“Bucky?” Steve’s voice breaks into Bucky’s swirling thoughts. “Talk to me, pal. You feelin’ alright?”

Bucky gives himself a shake and tries to smile. It falls short of reassuring, he can feel it. “I’m fine, Steve. Just...I got something I gotta say.” He looks around at the half-rubble buildings on either side of them and catches sight of a small kitchen garden tucked away around a corner. Pulling Steve behind him, Bucky ducks around the crumbled wall until they’re out of view of the road.

“You’re making me a little worried, here, Buck,” Steve says. He’s trying to sound lighthearted, but Bucky can hear the concern underlying the words.

Bucky groans softly; dammit, he isn’t trying to make the guy worry. “It’s fine, Steve, it’s nothing bad. At least, I hope it’s not bad. It’s just that I—” He breaks off, drops his gaze from Steve’s face in the faint starlight down to their boots in the shadows of the grass. He’s always thought of himself as brave, but now, trying to muster the courage to say what he wants to say, knowing it’s something he can’t take back once the words are out there… He opens his mouth, closes it again. Tries to find the words.

Steve waits for what seems like an endless minute, but when Bucky still can’t seem to speak, he reaches out and squeezes one big hand comfortingly on Bucky’s shoulder. “Buck, it’s okay. If it’s about what happened to you before I got here, or at Azzanno… I know something’s been hurtin’ you, I know you well enough to see it. And I’ll listen if you wanna talk, ‘course I will. But you don’t have to talk about it unless you want to.” His voice is earnest and so very _ Steve _, even as he huffs out a long sigh. “I’ve been trying not to push, even though I can tell you’ve been stewing over something, so just...if that’s what you want to talk about then I’m here, but—”

“No! That’s not it!” Bucky breaks in, finally finding his tongue again thanks to Steve being his usual selfless self. “I mean, that is it—Azzano’s a lot of it—but that’s not what I wanted to talk about now, I just had to tell you now that I love you in case I don’t get another chance! I just…” He slashes his hand through the air, shoves it through his hair and tugs hard. “I just had to say it.”

He raises his eyes to Steve’s and sees a slightly bemused smile, and a little furrow between Steve’s brows that means he’s surprised. “Bucky, it’s okay, calm down. ‘Course I love you, but really, you don’t gotta worry about the mission—”

Bucky cuts him off again. “No, Steve, you don’t… I mean that I _ love _ you. It’s always been you.” More words fail him, and he falls silent. He said it, the words are out there now and all he can do is wait for judgement.

He wants to look away but can’t. He needs to see the look on Steve’s face; except it’s an expression Bucky can’t quite read. Shock—confusion, certainly—but no anger that Bucky can see. At least, not yet.

Then Steve’s expression softens. “Bucky…”

And Bucky’s afraid to hear Steve’s next words, so he starts talking again even as he’s barely aware of what’s coming out of his mouth. “It’s okay Steve, it’s fine if you don’t… I just had to say it, I couldn’t leave it again—”

“Bucky,” Steve interrupts, a bit more forcefully, and Bucky’s words stammer to a halt. Steve’s hand slips from his shoulder until his fingers lightly encircle Bucky’s wrist. “Do you mean it?”

Bucky takes a deep breath. “That I love you? Yeah, Steve. I mean it.”

Steve nods, starts to say something but then swallows hard. “For how long?”

Laughing sadly, Bucky shakes his head. “Feels like two lifetimes.” Because it _ has _ been, for Bucky; two lifetimes of longing and regret.

Nodding again, Steve looks down at where his fingers are wrapped around Bucky’s wrist. He’s got that little furrow between his brows again, the one he gets when he thinks too hard. Bucky wants so badly to reach up and smooth it away, it’s all he can do to keep his free hand at his side.

Finally Steve speaks. “Love...isn’t something I ever gave much thought to. I think you know that. I always figured that someday, whenever someday came, that someone would be there and it would all work itself out. That it would be obvious.” He squeezes Bucky’s wrist gently. “But that doesn’t mean I didn’t sometimes...think about you.” Steve raises his eyes shyly to Bucky’s. 

And Bucky’s brain stalls out for a minute, because this is farther than he ever expected to get with this confession, and he’s quickly realizing that he didn’t think through what would happen if Steve returned the sentiment.

Which...it seems like maybe he does? Bucky’s not quite sure how to process that.

“Why...uh. But, you never said anything?” Bucky asks. 

Steve smiles awkwardly, voice more tentative than Bucky thinks he’s ever heard it. “Why didn’t you?”

And yeah, that’s fair. Bucky never said anything because he didn’t want to damage their friendship. Didn’t want to risk hurting Steve, either emotionally or more literally by getting one of them arrested. Steve being who he is, probably kept his silence for the same reasons. “Was happy with what we had. It was always enough.”

They not-quite-look at each other without talking for a few minutes, then Steve opens his mouth. Closes it and makes a face like he’s not sure what he wants to say. “So why’re you telling me now?” His eyes go wide as he must realize how that sounds. “Not that I’m upset! Really, it’s...pretty much the opposite. But just...why _ now?” _

Bucky can’t say _ It’s because I kept silent once before and you died without knowing how I felt _ . Of course he can’t. So instead he just shrugs and runs his hand through his hair. “Being here, fighting a war... everything’s changed since I left Brooklyn. Everything except how I feel about you, Steve. And we’ve been...I don’t wanna say _ lucky _, because most of the last two years has been shit, but we’re still alive. We’re together. But we have this next mission, and then the rest of this war, and I just… I wanted you to know now, in case…” His voice shakes a little and he pinches the bridge of his nose. “I just wanted you to know.”

Warmth covers Bucky’s hand; Steve’s hand carefully drawing his away from his face. “Aw, Buck. I’m not real sure what to say. As a friend, as the next closest thing to family, yeah I love you.” He takes a deep breath, lets it out. “But knowing how you feel, I’m real certain I can love you back the same way if I let myself stop trying not to. The most important person in my life has always been you, Bucky. I figure…I hope...that’s a pretty good place to start.”

Bucky feels a smile spread across his face, because yeah, maybe it’s not a wild declaration like in the movies, but when it comes to feelings Steve’s always been more restrained. And what Steve just said? Yeah, that sounds pretty damn good.

“Yeah, Steve. Yeah. That sounds real good.” Bucky laughs a little, feeling a blush creep across his cheeks. He tips his head forward until he’s resting against Steve’s broad chest. He feels a bit like he’s high, like he’s flying. “Shit, that went a lot better than I thought.”

Steve’s chest rumbles with his low chuckle. One of his hands comes up to gently brush through Bucky’s hair, sliding down to cup the back of Bucky’s neck. “You wanna look at me for a sec?”

Raising his head, Bucky meets Steve’s eyes. Steve’s thumb strokes along the edge of Bucky’s jaw, a silent question.

Leaning in, Bucky answers with the press of his lips to Steve’s, as soft as the night wrapped around them. 

He’s kissed enough girls over the years to know he likes kissing, but none of them felt even half as good as kissing Steve. He figures it must be the difference when you love someone, and then he isn’t thinking at all. Lost in the warmth of Steve, Bucky leans closer until they’re chest to chest. Steve’s lips are tentative, his breath puffing warm against Bucky’s cheek, and it’s so perfect Bucky feels like he’s going to melt.

They kiss and touch for endless minutes, Bucky teasing and prompting Steve to follow his lead with soft licks and sharp nips, fingers gentle in Steve’s hair or stroking across his neck. When they finally pull apart, they’re both breathing heavy. Steve’s eyes seem to glitter in the faint light, pleased and hot. Bucky can only imagine he must look the same.

“God, Buck,’ Steve groans softly. “That was…” He can’t seem to find the words, and Bucky smirks. Runs his fingers through Steve’s hair once more.

“Yeah,” he whispers. “That sure was something, Stevie.”

They might’ve stood there for hours if the ruckus from a passing group of soldier’s hadn’t jolted them back to awareness of the time and the fact that they were basically out in public.

“Guess we gotta get back,” he says, and while he’s sad they can’t just stay in this moment forever, he’s pretty damn thrilled at how the last half-hour went down.

“I wish we didn’t have to,” Steve sighs. “But I know you’re right. At the least, we can’t keep standing here where anyone can walk by and see us.”

Feeling bold, Bucky steps close again and gives Steve a teasing smile. “You’ve got private quarters, though, right? Maybe we can...keep talking?” 

The blush that fills Steve’s face gives Bucky no doubt that his guy knows exactly what Bucky’s hinting at—more kissing, if Bucky has his way, and maybe something else besides. “Yeah, Buck. We got...a lot to talk about.”

With a laugh and a last squeeze to Steve’s hand, Bucky leads the way out from their hideaway and back onto the street.

They head straight to the headquarters, intending to find that privacy, but they don’t get the chance. As soon as they get back to the SSR offices they’re pulled into frantic preparations for the mission because intel just came through confirming that Zola would be on the train. Which means the Commandos have to get ready and leave tonight, to make sure they get to the right location in time to infiltrate the train.

_ I wanted more time with you, _ Bucky tries to tell Steve silently, hoping Steve understands the expression despite Bucky trying not to be so obvious that anyone else catches them.

And Steve, perfect Steve, of course he gets it. Quirks a smile at Bucky that says, _ Me too. _

But there’s nothing to be done, so Bucky throws himself into preparations, trying to remember every step of the train mission from the first time, and packing anything he thought might help him change the course of events.

He cheers himself up with the memory of Steve’s kiss, the confession of their shared feelings, and he’s more determined than ever to figure out how to save Steve’s life.

Then they can both go into the future and explore a life together.


	5. Chapter 5

[ ](http://imgbox.com/naoWHBCV)

* * *

Bucky stomps his feet against the frozen, snowy ground, pacing restlessly both in an attempt to warm up, and to try to banish the nauseating mix of fear and anger churning inside him. _ Fucking mountain. Fucking cold. Fucking train _. The last goddamn place on Earth he wants to be, and here he is again. On top of a mountain waiting for the train that lives in his nightmares. Waiting for the moment where Steve dies...or doesn’t. Not even the memory of their kiss is enough to calm him down.

He tries to hold onto the furious anger to smother the fear. Nothing he’s done up to now has made a damn bit of difference, and now all he’s left with are a few short hours and no idea which second might be the one that’s his last chance.

The rest of the Commandos are scattered around their little cliff area, backs to the wind while they check gear and count down the minutes. Jones and Morita hunch over the radio pack, listening to whatever signal they can catch as they fiddle with the antenna. Dugan and Dernier are busy checking over the ropes and other gear that will take them from the mountainside down to the tracks—and assuming their timing is right, on top of the train cars.

Christ on a crutch, the whole plan sounds just as insane now as it did the first time. Jumping off a mountain, sliding down a wire, and landing on a moving train... The whole group of them must be out of their minds.

Bucky adjusts his rifle where it hangs across his shoulder. Steve’s standing near the edge of the cliff, eyes on the tracks far below them. He’s straight-backed, tall and imposing, and Bucky finds himself helpless beside his love for Steve all over again. Except this time, he knows what it’s like to have his feelings returned, however little time they had to enjoy it.

Bucky studies Steve quietly for a few minutes, taking in his stance and expression, the blue of his eyes and sunshine-blond of his hair. Etching it into his memory along with all the other memories he has of Steve. 

Eventually he knows it’s almost time, and Bucky moves to join him there at the cliff edge, standing at Steve’s right side as always, looking out over the valley that became the site of his greatest failure. 

He’s determined that he won’t fail this time.

With a tilt of his head, he gives Steve an arch look from the corner of his eye. “Remember when I made you ride the Cyclone at Coney Island?” 

Steve gives him a look right back. “Yeah, and I threw up?”

“This isn’t payback, is it?” Bucky teases, because a bit of humour and a shared memory is all he can muster right now. He feels tense as a wire stretched taut, as though his nerves will vibrate him right out of his skin.

So instead he focuses on Steve’s teasing smirk. “Now, why would I do that?”

They share a smile, and Bucky can see the new warmth in Steve’s eyes now, born of quiet words and soft touches in the dark. But they can’t do anything about it here, not surrounded by the Commandos and only moments away from the jump.

Then Gabe waves a hand from his spot near the radio, calling out to the team. He confirms that Zola’s on the train and it’s coming fast, which means the mission’s on and it’s time to go.

Bucky wants to wait—to stop time, to make these moments with Steve last longer—but he knows he can’t. All he can do is go forward.

The train comes speeding around a mountain curve, and the next few minutes are all wind and fear as Bucky throws himself off the cliff behind Steve and hopes that the zipline will hold. He tries to tell himself that he knows it will because it did the first time, but he still keeps his eyes firmly locked on Steve ahead of him and avoids looking down at the sheer drop below.

They’ve got the timing perfect, landing with three thumps on top of the train cars one after the other, crouching down against the force of the wind. There’s hardly time for Bucky to catch his breath before they’re moving again. Running forward over the cars to get to the right one is as tricky as Bucky remembers, the cars rattling and swaying, wind and snow in his face and beneath his feet, but they make it. 

Steve slips down the short ladder into the car, and Bucky follows close behind. Jones gives them a nod and keeps going across the top, his destination the engine while Steve and Bucky keep the train guards busy.

The first car looks empty, and Bucky raises his rifle and slips down the right aisle while Steve takes the left. They reach the end of the car and the open door, without encountering anyone. It’s suspicious, since the place should’ve been crawling with Hydra soldiers. Steve clearly thinks so, too. He casts a glance back toward Bucky, expression questioning even under the cowl.

Steve returns Bucky’s nod and moves forward, shield held at the ready as he leads the way through the door to the next car. Bucky raises his rifle higher, training the sight over Steve’s shoulder. The car ahead looks empty too, but Bucky knows that it’s a trap. 

A noise behind him catches his attention for just long enough that Steve gets a few steps ahead of him and—

_ Shit, he forgot about the doors! _ Just like the first time, as soon as Steve enters the next car the doors slam shut, separating them both and _ Bucky fucking forgot about this. _

He runs forward, trying to pry the door open again even though he knows it’s useless. He sees Steve’s face through the windows and shouts, “Steve!” then has to turn and face the attacker shooting at him from the far end of the car. 

Over the noise of the train, Bucky can hear the sound of the blue-light Hydra gun firing from the car ahead—shooting at Steve—but he tries to ignore it. Bullets ping and spark off the metal shelving and walls as Bucky and the Hydra asshole exchange fire. 

Bucky shoots down one aisle then dodges past the other to duck down behind a pile of crates in the corner by the door. He leans out to shoot down the aisle, rapid bursts of the automatic rifle loud in his ears. He just has to last long enough to either shoot the bastard or for Steve to get back here like he did the first time.

He spares a brief second to hope that for this next minute things _ do _ happen the same, even as he knows that time is running short and Bucky’s not going to get many more chances to change Steve’s fate.

The rifle runs out of ammo and Bucky swaps for his handgun, firing a few quick shots as he dodges back across the mouth of the aisle to the other side and ducks into the opposite corner. He can see the Hydra guard advancing and leans out to take another shot.

A huge crash sounds from the other car, and then Steve’s shoving open the door and tossing Bucky his own handgun—just in time as Bucky was out of bullets. Then Steve charges into the car behind Bucky, shield up, and shoves half the shelf toward the Hydra asshole who jumps out of the way—right into Bucky’s next bullet. 

He and Steve share a glance, both panting from exertion. The pause is surely less than a minute, though it feels much longer. Bucky tries to show Steve everything he feels in that moment, because it’s important to him that Steve knows; that neither of them will forget. _ I love you. I missed you. _

Something in Bucky stills as he meets those blue eyes—the eyes of the man he loves—who by some miracle loves him back, and with sudden clarity he knows that the only moment that matters is now, that everything about going back in time and trying to save Steve’s life comes down to this.

He knows what happens next. All he has to do is change it.

Time seems to both speed up and slow down simultaneously. Before they can move into the next car, the Hydra soldier looms in the doorway behind them, weapon charging with an unnatural whine and _ oh, this is different _. They made it all the way into the next car the first time, before the guy with the double guns got back up and started firing at them. But this time they paused in that shared moment together before moving forward—just long enough to change the timing of the next moment.

Hope lights Bucky up inside.

_ Let it be enough. _

Steve spins in front of Bucky, shield up just in time to protect both of them and deflect the energy blast, and for a second all Bucky sees is blue light and smoke as the force throws them backwards and blows out the side of the car.

Bucky hits the floor hard, disoriented as he scrambles to get back to his feet amid the sudden roar of wind and cold. He doesn’t know what to expect now; after nearly two years of having an ace up his sleeve he feels like he’s flying blind.

He can see Steve on his side, pressed against the opposite wall and for a moment he’s terrified that he’s failed. But Steve groans and starts trying to roll over, and Bucky snaps back into action. 

_ The shield. _

He sees it right there in front of him, and it’s so much like the first time that he almost doesn’t pick it up. He doesn’t want this to go wrong, but he can hear the guns powering up again and Steve’s dead for sure if he doesn’t—

Bucky shoves his arm through the straps and lifts the shield as he gets back to his feet, firing off a shot at the Hydra soldier and it’s enough to get the energy weapon turned his way instead. He has only a second to brace himself before the guns fire. 

But he’s not Steve, he doesn’t have the same strength. The nightmare-blue energy hits the shield full force, and Bucky feels nothing but pain as the shield flies out of his hand and he’s blasted backwards. Cold fire lances up his back as he crashes against the open metal edge of the car and out over nothing but air. His desperate hands catch against a piece of railing, but he’s barely hanging on under his own weight and he can already see the bolts straining against the metal.

_ Steve. Please God let him be okay! _ Bucky tries to pull himself up but there’s nothing else within reach to grab onto. He can’t see into the car from this angle, can’t hear anything over the sound of the roar of wind and the rattle of the train, so all he can do is beg whatever power that may be listening. _ Please let Steve be alive. Please let him have the time to get up and defend himself. Please _—

“Bucky!”

Steve’s there, leaning out of the opening then climbing out and clinging to the warped metal. “Hang on!” Then he’s reaching for Bucky, stretching as far as he can. “Grab my hand!”

For one crystalline moment Bucky can only think, _ Steve’s alive. I did it. _

He reaches for Steve’s hand, straining for it. Bucky’s changed the outcome, he’s prevented Steve’s death, and now they can both finish this mission and go home. Together.

Their fingers barely brush, Bucky reaching as far as he can—

The railing breaks free and Bucky falls.

“_ No! _” Steve’s shout is barely audible over the sound of the wind and Bucky’s own scream as he drops into nothing. Less than a second and he’s too far away to see Steve’s face, falling and falling—

He’s afraid, the scream still ripping out of his throat but beneath the terror there’s a wave of fierce relief because _ he did it _, Steve’s alive, everything was worth it. Even this—even dying—if it means that Steve lives.

_ There’s always a sacrifice _.

Then Bucky feels only pain and cold as the ground rushes to meet him, and there’s nothing but darkness.


	6. Chapter 6

[ ](http://imgbox.com/BdZV2gRH)

* * *

_I’m with you to the end of the line _.

The words cut like knives, like electricity striking the brain, and the Asset freezes. Malfunctions. The Arm is raised high, ready for another blow, but hangs there as the Asset stares at the mission beneath him. Categorizes injuries. Fractured cheekbone. Fractured jaw. Significant bruising and abrasions. _ One helluv’a shiner, punk, what were ya thinkin’? _

The Asset shakes his head sharply. What are these images, these words? Where did they come from? Blue light, an old war, the mission’s face on a tiny body, and an old man’s face in the mirror of a bland room. Why does the Asset know it’s his own face?

He tries again to bring the Arm down with force but can’t, as though something invisible holds him back. He knows this face—can picture it childish and small, older and too lean, bloody noses and black eyes, scraped knees and the shield with it’s star and colours, blue and red and white the same as the uniform underneath his hands.

Too many images—_ memories _ , some part of him recognizes—bombard him, and he freezes. Tries to process what he’s thinking, what’s he’s _ remembering _ but can’t make sense of it. This body as a child, as an old man. The Captain, but not yet because he’s still skinny and small and angry. _ What’cha so mad about, Steve? _

But there’s no more time to try and understand, no time to try and keep fighting. The helicarrier is burning and falling apart all around them, and a metal beam crashes through glass and steel and sends the mission, the Captain, Captain America, _ Stevie, _ falling through the air and into the water far, far below.

And it’s wrong. _ It’s wrong _ . Steve isn’t supposed to fall, he isn’t supposed to die. The whole point was for Steve to be _ alive _—

_ Who the hell is Bucky? _

_ Your name is James Buchanan Barnes. You’re my friend. _

_ Where are we going? The future. _

The Asset hesitates, but the knowledge wells up from that deep place inside that he always feels but can’t see. _ Save Steve. _

Then he’s leaping from the collapsing helicarrier, diving deep into the water, reaching out with the Arm until he digs metal fingers into the heavy material of the mission’s—Steve’s—uniform, and drags him onto the riverbank.

He stands over the mission, dripping water and watching until he sees the evidence of breathing, sees that star-spangled chest rising and falling. There’s too much noise in his brain, too many competing images—competing memories. Nightmare blue of a swirling portal, the loving blue of Steve’s eyes. He sways for a moment, but it’s too much, and there’s a helicarrier sinking into the river which is going to bring agents and military and police, none of which the Asset wants to deal with.

But the mission—Steve—is breathing, is _ alive _ , and the Asset isn’t sure of much but he’s sure that this was _ right _. That saving Steve is the only thing that matters.

He turns slowly, eyes lingering on the prone body of the mission until the last moment, before he limps away and disappears.


	7. Epilogue

[ ](http://imgbox.com/ENab45A8)

* * *

**Epilogue**

It takes nearly three months after the events in DC for Bucky—no longer the Asset but not quite James Buchanan Barnes, not yet—to sort through the noise and confusion in his head. The longer he’s away from Hydra, away from the repeated memory wipes, the longer he has time to heal and to simply _ be _, the more memories resurface.

At first it’s too confusing and bizarre, with memories of himself at too many different ages—a kid in Brooklyn, a young man in the War twice-over. An old man in a nursing home, a stealthy shadow assassinating a European diplomat in Bulgaria in 1982. It all overlaps, memories of the same dates but two different lives.

Sometime in the second month a memory surfaces, where the version of himself in his thoughts is old and shaky and is talking with Stark Junior about _ time travel, _ of all things. The fucking Tesseract, and a portal, and a witchy little girl with red magic floating around her hands.

It’s enough of a key that he’s able to start grouping the memories together into some semblance of order, and what he eventually realizes is that he’s lived three lives in a way, and all but his current one exist only in his jumbled memories.

Eventually enough memories come back, and he’s able to make enough sense out of them, that he knows he is James Buchanan Barnes. Even though it doesn’t quite feel like the truth, it’s enough that he feels ready to approach a museum in D.C. being advertised as having a special exhibit on Captain America and the Howling Commandos. He has two separate memories of being part of that team, of fighting at Steve’s side. With any luck, the museum can provide him with answers to his questions, and maybe even clear up some of the confusion.

The museum is crowded, so many people milling around that it makes him tense and twitchy. He shoves both hands in his pockets and slouches, hat brim pulled low over his face, and slips through the flow of bodies following the gaudy red, white, and blue posters pointing the way.

Over the following forty-five minutes, James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes learns a great deal about one Steven Grant Rogers, a.k.a. Captain America.

Most of it makes him very angry.

Oh, sure, some of it is good. Like how the two of them were best friends as children. Or how the Commandos were one of the first publicly integrated units during the War, largely due to Steve’s insistence on including Gabe and Morita. Or learning that all the other Commandos lived through the War and went home to have happy lives and families in the following years.

But there’s also the fact that Steve crashed a goddamn plane into the goddamn ocean in an act of self-sacrifice that was as heroic as it was _ fucking stupid, _ and the pure fire of rage that blazes through him makes him feel more like Bucky than he ever has before.

Even through the haze of fury, seeing the story of Steve crashing the Valkyrie after defeating Schmidt brings a wealth of other stuff into focus. He remembers that this isn’t how Steve died the first time, but that it had happened on the train. He remembers that the second time, when Bucky went back and relived that year and a half during the War, he saved Steve but fell himself—remembers the long, long fall, and the jumbled emotions of fear and fierce relief that Steve had been safe. That Bucky had made things right.

So to find out now that the big blond idiot went and _ crashed a plane anyway? _ Even knowing that Steve survived into the future, most likely due to the serum, it’s infuriating. And Bucky, well…

He maybe goes a little feral about it.

Turns out that the anger one Bucky Barnes can feel as a direct result of the stupidity of one Steve Rogers is enough to sustain him through the entire three-hour, exceeding-all-speed-limits-on-a-stolen-motorcycle ride from D.C. to Manhattan, New York.

Adding insult to injury, the bike runs out of gas a handful of blocks away from his destination, because _ of course _it does. Bucky abandons it on a Manhattan sidewalk and stuffs a wad of stolen Hydra cash into the saddlebags; hopefully it’s enough to compensate the owner for Bucky’s...appropriation.

Still riding the tide of anger—other emotions are swirling together under the surface, but the anger keeps him going so he focuses on that—he storms through Manhattan on foot. Even though he’s only in his sloppy civilian disguise, people scatter around him as though he’s in the full Winter Soldier kit.

But he doesn’t care, oh no sir. Let that idiot Steve see him coming and be goddamn _ afraid _.

Sure enough, the commotion must get picked up by something, probably Stark-related, and by the time Bucky storms through the doors of Avengers Tower there’s no civilians in sight, but a whole crowd of Avengers and security people in tactical gear waiting for him.

He doesn’t give a hot damn about any of them, though. Not the superheroes, and certainly not the regular human guards. He only has eyes for the giant blond jackass standing front and center with the shield on his back and not even wearing any goddamn body armour _ what the fuck Steve, really? _

He vaguely registers the sound of Steve’s voice telling the others to stand down, but Bucky just stomps up to him, straight into his personal space, and shoves Steve with both hands right in the middle of his chest. No finesse. Like how a kid fights when they get overwhelmed. But it’s unexpected enough to knock Steve right down on his ass in the middle of the floor.

Steve looks shocked, the security and superheroes are pointing weapons at him, and Bucky Does Not Give A Damn. “_ Steven Grant Rogers, what in the everloving fuck? You went and crashed a motherfucking plane?” _ He slashes the metal hand wildly through the air, then shoves it into his hair.

_ “After everything I did to save your life, you fucking throw it away? Self-sacrificing jackass! I managed to get out of that damn plane, I’m sure you could’ve done the same. I’ve seen you kick a hole in the side of a tank, for Christ’s sake, so don’t try and tell me you couldn’t get out of that stupid plane before it hit the water.” _

_ “I didn’t go back in time and relive that goddamn war and save your fucking life just so you could die anyway! Even if you’re apparently not actually dead, what the fuck! Do you understand how much it sucks to experience World War Two for the _ second time _ ? I ate Spam again, Steven!” _

He isn’t even sure he’s saying anymore, but he knows he’s absolutely going off, one fine line away from actually screaming. His voice is full of so much Brooklyn he can practically taste it, and he punctuates his diatribe with rude gestures, his index finger jabbing right at Steve’s face. His voice fills the atrium, echoing from the walls and glass. He’s only vaguely aware of the crowd around them, standing frozen now and silent with shock as Bucky Barnes reads Steve Rogers the riot act. 

Steve’s just lying there on the tile, frozen in an awkward sprawl, wide eyes glued to Bucky. He looks panicked and kind of teary, sprawled on his ass on the floor like a dumbass and Bucky finally runs out of words and just sort of stands there, arms at his sides, chest heaving as he tries to catch his breath after all that yelling. He doesn’t think he’s said that many words total in the whole three months he’s been recovering.

Except Steve just says, “_ Bucky, _” and Bucky’s helpless to do anything else except say, “Steve,” in return.

Then Steve, sounding a bit dazed, asks, “Did you say _ time travel? _”

Bucky deflates and collapses slowly to sit on the floor in front of Steve. He’s not quite close enough to touch, except he wants to so he stretches out one booted foot to press it against Steve’s calf. He starts to laugh, helplessly, because _ what even is his life? _ “Ah, Steve. Have I ever got a story for you...”

**Author's Note:**

> FYI re: the tags/warnings for major character death, there are references to Steve having died in an alternate/previous timeline, including some of Bucky's memories when he recalls when that happened (no detailed/graphic description, however). Also canon-typical references to Steve crashing the plane, etc. All on-screen Steve is alive-Steve, and there's definitely a happy ending!


End file.
